


never thought i'd see the day in my life

by coruscatingcatastrophe



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Twilight, Crack Treated Seriously, Developing Relationship, Fluff and Crack, Fluff and Humor, Friendship, Homesick Lance (Voltron), Keith (Voltron) is a Good Boyfriend, Keith (Voltron) is a Good Friend, Lance (Voltron) is a Ray of Sunshine, Lance (Voltron)-centric, Light Angst, M/M, Romance, Socially Awkward Keith (Voltron), Teenage Dorks, Vampire Keith (Voltron), Vampires, Yes you read that right, and isn't lance the most sunshiney sunshine youve ever seen, and then, because its me of course theres angst, because of course, im adding that last tag because i just saw it and oh my gods?? thats a tag. that is the best tag, it also becomes a sickfic for .2 seconds if you're into that, just so you're aware, keith as edward, literally everything else is better—i mean different, not going to lie this is probably crack, probably also, starring lance as bella, this is a twilight au, update: so this definitely has become more fluff than crack, wow i love him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-25
Updated: 2020-11-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:00:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 46,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26113024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coruscatingcatastrophe/pseuds/coruscatingcatastrophe
Summary: But Keith has somehow gone even paler in the short amount of time he’s been at the table, and he shakes his head. “No, something is . . .” His gaze flickers back to Lance, and he’s startled to find that Keith’s eyes are purple. They’ve got to be contacts. Ridiculous. As if the mullet and gloves and personality weren’t enough.Keith pushes away from the table abruptly, looking incredibly put-off now. “I, uh—gotta go,” he mutters, before angrily gathering up the backpack he’d dropped into the chair next to him and storming out of the cafeteria.“Huh,” Hunk says. “Well, that introduction could have gone a bit better. Don’t take it personally though; sometimes Keith’s just like that.”-Or, a Twilight au starring Lance as Bella, Keith as Edward, and the rest of the Voltron gang as themselves. Lance is insufferable, Keith is awkwardly trying to figure out why Lance is the way he is, and along the way they fall in love, or something. It's probably, definitely the best love story since Twilight itself.
Relationships: Keith & Lance (Voltron), Keith/Lance (Voltron), Lance & Lance's Mother (Voltron)
Comments: 94
Kudos: 421





	1. hey, you

**Author's Note:**

> hello i'm back with another crack fic to distract from my giant angst fic. except so far it's turning out slightly more serious than intended, so i guess take this however you will. i don't know how often updates will come, because this is more of a side project for me, but it's exactly what the tags say. it's twilight, but with the resident idiots we know and love. please enjoy this vampire romance disaster. 
> 
> also: i've taken four years of academic spanish, but my real life opportunities to have conversations in the language have been...sparse, so apologies if any of the terms used in this fic are incorrect. if you notice anything embarrassingly off, please let me know and i'll be happy to correct it. 
> 
> fic title and all chapter titles are from troye sivan's "rager teenager!" because why not

Lance McClain detests Forks. 

Lance McClain has  _ many reasons  _ why he hates Forks, all of which could be extended into a list the length of a thousand-page-long audiobook, but can be condensed into a single glaring fact: 

Forks  _ is not, never will be, and could never hope to measure up  _ to Florida. 

He and his mother have been here for a week, and already he’s given up on trying to give it a chance. It was the one thing his mother had requested of him, when she sat down to tell him they were moving.  _ “We need a change of scenery, Lancito.  _ I  _ need to be somewhere where everything does not cause my heart to break. Give it half a year. Then, you’ll be able to graduate and go wherever you wish. Six months,  _ mijo.” __

It had been easy—well, not easy;  _ easier,  _ maybe—to promise to try, back when they were still sitting on their patio by the ocean and he could go to sleep sure that the sun was going to rise in the morning. Now that he’s here, Lance wants to take it all back. He hasn’t seen the sun in what feels like  _ years.  _ He’s pretty sure his blood is beginning to freeze over from how cold he is all the time. 

“Lance.” His mother clicks her tongue after giving him a once-over, disapproval in the curve of her mouth. “You need something thicker than your brother’s old jacket. Go put on the new one I bought for you.” 

Lance thinks of the new, puffy blue jacket hovering like a bad omen in his closet, and everything in his brain cringes away from the thought of wearing it. But there’s a darker, heavier shadow cast beneath his mother’s eyes, and he doesn’t want to make this any harder for her than it already is—even though it’s hard for him, too, and she doesn’t seem to  _ get that.  _ He turns on his heel and goes to put it on, but he leaves Marco’s jacket on underneath. He’s determined to shed the cursed thing the minute he steps through the school doors. 

The ride to his new school is silent. He stares out the window at the gloomy gray sky, knowing there must be a pretty pessimistic scowl on his face, but his mother says nothing about it. The atmosphere feels heavy, and for once she isn’t trying to pretend it’s not. All Lance can think about is how if he was back home, Nadia and Sylvio would be fighting over the iPad in the backseat, and his mother would be cursing in rapid-fire Spanish at the obscene amount of idiotic drivers around them. It’s lonely, and even though that’s how Lance has felt ever since they got on the plane to come here, the conscious thought still brings a lump to his throat. 

His mother pulls up to the school—a small network of brick buildings;  _ so  _ different from his old, towering high school back in Miami—and as he opens the door, she turns to him and says, “Have a good day,  _ mjio.”  _

He nods, quietly clears his throat to rid it of the lump, and forces himself to smile. “You too.  _ Te quiero, Mami.”  _

_ “Yo también te quiero,”  _ she replies easily, her own smile fleeting but, Lance thinks, a little bit genuine. He takes a deep breath and steps out of the car, fingers tightening around the strap of his backpack as he watches her pull away from the curb, lifts his hand in a halfhearted wave that he knows she doesn’t see. Then he turns, the lump reforming, and goes in search of the office. 

There, he receives his class schedule and locker number, as well as a map of the school that he’s probably going to throw out the second he leaves the office. He spends a few minutes talking with the receptionist; it’s mindless chatter, questions like,  _ “What’s the weather like in Florida?”  _ but it’s the first conversation he’s had with someone other than his mother and not on a phone screen in days, and by the time she remarks that he should go find his locker before classes start, his mood already feels like it’s been raised by an exponent or two. 

True to his normal act-first, think-later nature, he tosses the map in the trash can outside the office door, and then turns down three different hallways before realizing what a grave mistake he’s made.  _ This school is smaller than a grocery store,  _ he thinks to himself in quiet outrage, even though his pulse is beginning to speed up in panic.  _ It should not be this hard to find one locker.  _ He scans the small handful of students still milling around before classes, and latches onto a guy wearing an orange bandana. “Hey!” he calls out, trying not to sound desperate as he trips over his feet in his haste to catch him before he can disappear. “Can you please,  _ please please with a cherry on top,  _ help me find my locker? And then, uh . . . Mr. Antok’s class? I’m lost.” 

The guy blinks at him for a moment, takes in his frenzied appearance, and then squints. “Are you new?” 

“Very,” Lance confesses gravely. The guy nods, seeming to deeply ponder something, then sticks out his hand. “I’m Hunk,” he introduces himself. Lance blinks, taken aback for a moment. He wants to ask if Hunk is  _ really  _ his name, but ultimately decides that might be a rude thing to say to someone when you first meet them, especially when that person holds the key to you not missing your first class and immediately ruining your reputation in a new school. 

“Lance,” he replies, shakes his hand, and bounces on the balls of his feet anxiously. The halls are slowly beginning to filter out the few milling students, and that’s probably his cue to skedaddle to class as soon as possible. But he keeps his nerves to himself as he follows Hunk to, presumably, his locker, paying half a mind to the guy’s friendly chatter. 

“I didn’t know there was going to be a new student,” Hunk says. “Usually that kind of thing gets around. Small town and all—gossip is the most exciting thing that ever happens here. Where you from?” 

“Why? You going to sell my information to the rumor mill?” Lance says dryly, and then backpedals at the unexpected flash of hurt that crosses his face. “Uh—sorry man, that was a joke. I’m from Miami. Tell anyone you want, I don’t actually care. At my old school this rumor went around that I put a goose in Mr. Sendak’s car. I got detention because it bit him and ruined his velvet suit.” 

Lance shrugs off his puffy abomination of a coat, relieved to have it gone and shoved into his locker. Hunk says, “That’s terrible. You got in trouble for something you didn’t do?” He looks genuinely upset by this, and honestly, it’s weird how touching it is. Lance chuckles, pats his shoulder, and decides that yep, he’s going to make this guy his first new friend. “Nah, the rumor was true. I definitely did it. But  _ someone _ had to—that suit was  _ atrocious,  _ Hunk. I’m talking a true eighties’ fashion disaster. Getting chewed out by my  _ mamá _ was totally worth it.” 

(He doesn’t mention that later, after his mother had finished her rant and gone to take a bath to “decompress,” his father had walked out into the backyard and laughed so hard he cried. He’d looked at Lance, brown eyes flashing with humor, and said,  _ “I don’t believe I’ve ever been a prouder father than I am right now.”) _

(He’d still gotten grounded. It had still been worth it.) 

Hunk shakes his head, mystified. “You’re a weird guy, aren’t you, Lance?” 

Lance grins. “I prefer the term  _ whimsical.  _ So, buddy, you ready to get to class?” 

Hunk doesn’t object to being called  _ buddy.  _ Something in Lance’s chest—something he hadn’t even  _ realized  _ was out of place—clicks and settles down. For the first time, Lance entertains the notion that maybe,  _ maybe,  _ things here won’t be as terrible as he thought. 

  
  


_____

  
  


In all of his classes throughout the day, Lance is presented like a shiny new toy, even though each class is so small that he recognizes at least half of the faces in all of them after first period. It gets a little uncomfortable after the first time, having to fib his way through questions like:  _ “What brings you to Forks?”  _ and  _ “How are you liking it here so far?”  _ He doesn’t want to talk about why he’s here, and he hates just about everything except for Hunk, but he mumbles something about a change of scenery and liking everything fine, then he sits down and tries to ignore the stares. 

Now, contrary to the opinions of any of his family members, Lance isn’t a vain person. He knows that out of everyone in a crowd, he’s usually not the most remarkable thing to look at. It’s not his natural inclination to jump to the conclusion that everyone is staring at him, because  _ why would they?  _ but today is . . . different. He  _ knows  _ people are staring at him, because he’s new and different and Hunk said that not a lot happens around here, so of  _ course  _ they’re going to notice him. If he was back home, Lance thinks that he would be loving the attention. But here, it just feels—uncomfortable. 

Still, he makes the best of it. He flashes his signature Florida-sunshine-smile and talks to anyone that comes up to him, and for the most part, everyone is friendly and nice. But by the time lunch rolls around, he’s drained from all the repeated surface-level conversation, and he’s relieved when his eyes catch on Hunk in the lunchroom just as his new friend notices him and waves his hand in silent invitation. 

He drops down into the seat beside him and turns his attention to the two girls seated across from them. One is amber-haired and tiny, like,  _ middle school  _ tiny, but she’s got an intimidatingly intelligent vibe about her and a slowly-forming robot coming together on the table out of what looks like stray bits of machinery. The other is . . .  _ woah.  _ Lance’s heart skips a beat, or like, twenty, as his mouth dries up like a puddle in the Sahara desert. 

“Lance, meet Pidge and Allura. Pidge and Allura,” Hunk waves his hand in a gesture too grand for Lance to deserve, “This is Lance.” 

Allura smiles; it’s the smile of an angel, the smile of a goddess. Her teeth flash as perfect and white as her long, curly hair, and Lance has the embarrassing feeling that she knows exactly how starstruck he is, even before he opens his mouth and makes the world’s worst first impression. 

“I—um, uh,  _ hello.  _ Wow, you’re like . . . the most gorgeous person I’ve ever met.” 

Hunk claps a hand over his mouth, most likely to cover up a laugh. Pidge doesn’t bother trying to hide her snort, not looking up from her project as she notes, “Allura, you’ve got another fanboy.” 

Lance flushes immediately, but Allura graciously doesn’t tease him. “Why, thank you, Lance,” she says, and this is when he first learns that she has a British accent. She pronounces his name like  _ Lonce,  _ and he thinks he’s never heard anything more beautiful in his life. 

Luckily, the conversation moves on swiftly, and soon his awkward blunder is quickly forgotten. They talk about what classes Lance is liking best, what classes he’s liking  _ least,  _ and pitch in their own helpful tips and tricks for how to deal with certain teachers. “Yikes, you’ve got Mr. Shirogane?” Hunk says when he takes a look at Lance’s schedule. “That’s Keith’s brother. He’s nice, but  _ brutal.  _ I nearly flunked his class, and I  _ like  _ physics.” 

That doesn’t bode well. Lance frowns pensively, but to distract himself from his new worry he asks, “Who’s Keith?” 

“Keith is . . . coming over to us now,” Hunk says, perking up after a quick scan around the room. He waves again, and Lance hones in on the figure he’s motioning to. He’s clad in all-black—the resident emo, perhaps?—but Lance forgets all about that when he sees the guy’s  _ face.  _ It’s perfectly symmetrical, he can tell even from this far away, like the golden ratio was designed with his face specifically in mind. Pale skin, ink-black hair, and . . . wait. No.  _ No.  _ Lance is instantly mortified by himself.  _ No one  _ in the universe should be able to make a mullet attractive. Even worse, Lance  _ should not _ find any person with a mullet attractive—golden-ratio’ed or not. 

But the closer Keith gets, the more his heart begins to act up.  _ Unbelievable,  _ Lance thinks, and feels as if he’s been incredibly betrayed by the universe. 

He wants to sink into a hole and disappear. Can he go back to being embarrassing over Allura? At least then he could still salvage a  _ little  _ piece of dignity and self-respect. 

“Hey,” Keith greets as he approaches, blank-faced and monotone.  _ His voice sounds like unenthusiastic honey,  _ Lance’s brain notes, and he wishes he could stomp on it with his doodled-on sneaker. Or maybe a pair of soccer cleats. 

“Keith. Give me a hair elastic,” Pidge demands as he sits down next to her. Wordlessly, he does, snapping a hair tie off of his glove-clad wrist for her to add to her robot. He’s wearing fingerless gloves.  _ No,  _ Lance laments in despair. 

Then Keith stiffens, and Lance flicks his gaze from his hands to his face. His thick eyebrows are furrowed, as if in deep concentration, and he gives Lance a once-over before disregarding him entirely, turning to peer around Pidge at Allura. “Do you smell that?” he asks, voice more like severely unhappy honey now. Which,  _ rude.  _ He didn’t even ask what Lance’s name is. 

Allura hums, paying little attention to him as she’s now scrolling on her phone. Her nails are long, perfectly manicured, and pristinely white to match her hair.  _ Focus on that, Lance,  _ he inwardly exhorts himself. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she says, “All I smell is the terrible odor of dozens of high school students all clamored into a single space combined with awful cafeteria food.” 

But Keith has somehow gone even paler in the short amount of time he’s been at the table, and he shakes his head. “No, something is . . .” His gaze flickers back to Lance, and he’s startled to find that Keith’s eyes are  _ purple.  _ They’ve got to be contacts.  _ Ridiculous.  _ As if the mullet and gloves and personality weren’t enough. 

Keith pushes away from the table abruptly, looking incredibly put-off now. “I, uh—gotta go,” he mutters, before angrily gathering up the backpack he’d dropped into the chair next to him and storming out of the cafeteria. 

“Huh,” Hunk says. “Well, that introduction could have gone a bit better. Don’t take it personally though; sometimes Keith’s just like that.” 

It’s kind of hard to listen to Hunk’s advice; Lance has a habit of taking things personally. Like, he knows Hunk is probably right, but the way Keith had looked at him sends a little shiver down his spine when he replays it in his mind, and not the good kind. 

But he does his best to put it out of his mind for the rest of lunch; he focuses back on the conversation as Pidge explains the mechanisms of her robot, and on how Hunk offers to share his bag of Cool Ranch Doritos with him, and how by the end of it,  _ somehow  _ he’s managed to get Allura’s number. (He’s not under the illusion that it’s for anything other than friendship purposes, but hey. Not everyone even gets to be  _ friends  _ with someone that beautiful in their lifetime, so.) 

By the time he’s walking through the door of his final class of the day—physics with Mr. Shirogane;  _ what joy— _ he’s managed to put the whole weird Keith thing out of his head. That is, until he catches sight of the boy in question, sitting at the  _ only  _ table in the room with an available seat, and his heart drops into his stomach. 

“You must be Lance,” Mr. Shirogane says with a welcoming smile, but Lance does not feel at ease as he gestures towards the half-empty table. “You can take a seat next to Keith, there.” He’s the first teacher all day to not ask Lance if he wants to introduce himself, and while two seconds ago he would have been relieved by that, now all he can feel is dread as he takes leaden step after leaden step to Keith. 

The boy in question stiffens up as Lance approaches, tries to subtly scoot his chair as far away as he can get away with. But Lance  _ notices,  _ and his chest twinges with mild offense as he noisily drags out the empty chair and slouches into it. “I’m Lance,” he tries to introduce himself anyway. Keith glances at him warily, his purple eyes dark and pupils wide, but says with a voice free of emotion, “Yeah, I know.” 

Lance is tempted to say something about how rude he’s acting, until he wonders if maybe the guy’s just socially awkward or anxious around new people or something. Before he can make up his mind to ask, Mr. Shirogane claps his hands together and announces that class is starting, and then Lance is too busy scribbling down notes to care much about how weird Keith is. 

Still, every now and then he notices out of the corner of his eye the way Keith occasionally scrunches up his nose as if he’s smelling something foul. It’s after he catches him not-so-surreptitiously leaning in for a sniff and then reeling back as far as he can that Lance snaps. Making sure Mr. Shirogane’s attention is fixed on the board, he leans into Keith’s space and hisses: “What is your  _ deal?”  _

Keith is still as stiff as a board. His face is as white as a sheet when he glances at him. “I don’t know what you mean,” he says dumbly. 

“Yes, you  _ do.”  _ Lance scoffs. “You keep sniffing me and making faces like I smell like cow manure, which is downright insulting because I can  _ guarantee  _ that my cologne costs more than whatever Walmart-brand deodorant  _ you _ use. Look, you don’t have to like me just because I’m hanging out with your friends, but that doesn’t mean you can just be  _ rude  _ to me.” 

He’s still leaning into Keith’s space; he only notices this when Keith jumps up, chair skidding back gratingly as he tries to get as far away from Lance as possible. It draws the attention of everyone in the room—including Mr. Shirogane.

“Shiro, can I—can I please be excused? I’m not feeling well,” Keith says shakily, with a subtle glare directed at Lance. Mr. Shirogane—or, Shiro? Lance is confused until he remembers Hunk saying that Keith is Mr. Shirogane’s brother—nods his head, a silent gesture of permission, and keeps his eyes on Keith until he’s gathered his stuff and whisked out the door. 

No one says anything about Keith’s weird, sudden exit; the Physics teacher turns back to the board, and everyone picks up right where they left off. Lance tries (and fails) not to think of pale, perfect skin and a scowl darker than thunderclouds for the rest of the day. 

  
  


_____

  
  


_ “Uncle Lance!”  _ crow the duo of voices, little faces crowding onto his phone screen to beam at him. He smiles back, feeling truly warm for the first time all day. 

“Hey, kiddos. How was school today?” he asks, and settles back into the sofa as his niece and nephew begin rambling over each other about their day. This is what their routine has become since the move; instead of sitting at the worn kitchen table or on the rug of the family room, Lance is sitting alone in a darkened living room while they’re in his house, entire states away. In his  _ home— _ because that’s what their little bungalow in Florida is.  _ Home  _ is cramped and loud and overflowing with people at all hours. Their house in Forks is too big, too dark, and too empty for just two people. When he isn’t on the phone and his mother is gone, he can hear the creaking of the foundation and the constant drip of the sink in the kitchen. (She’s been meaning to get someone out here to fix that this week. He wonders if she’s gotten around to calling someone yet.) 

“But how was  _ your  _ day, Uncle Lance?” Sylvio asks, his eyes dark and grave as he squints at the screen. “Did you make any friends? Did it  _ snow?”  _

“No snow yet, buddy,” Lance tells him. He does not tell him that he’s deeply troubled by the forecast, though: it’s  _ supposed  _ to snow, later on in the week. Lance has never seen snow in person, but he’s heard many horror stories, and he can’t imagine why anyone would enjoy it. But Sylvio is fascinated by the concept for some ungodly reason, and has requested that the moment it happens, Lance record and describe it to him in explicit detail. And well—Lance can’t deny his nephew anything. “I  _ did _ make a few friends though,” he admits, “and also maybe an enemy.” 

_ “Oh?”  _ Nadia perks up, eyes flashing with excitement. “Who is it? Did you spill juice all over them? Do they drive a motorcycle?” 

“I, uh, I don’t know if he drives a motorcycle.” Lance thinks about that deeply for a moment, because Keith seems  _ exactly  _ like the type of person to drive a motorcycle. “And I didn’t spill juice on him, but I kind of wish I had. His name is Keith, and he’s a real jerk.” 

“How come?” Sylvio asks, head tilting curiously, giving Lance a too-personal glimpse up his nostrils.  _ “Sylvi,  _ share the screen!” Nadia complains, and they begin to fight over the phone until someone off-camera clears their throat:  _ “Let me talk to Uncle Lance.” _

Nadia pouts, and then grudgingly says, “Okay. Bye, Uncle Lance!” 

“Bye, Uncle Lance!” Sylvio adds, and then the screen goes blurry as it’s passed over to his brother. Marco’s serious face fills the screen, and immediately Lance’s mood falls a little. 

“Hey, Marco. What’s up?” he says anyway, keeps his voice light an upbeat even as his smile slips. His brother doesn’t answer the question. 

“How are you holding up?” he asks instead—a question for a question: Lance’s least favorite way to dialogue. He shrugs, tries to strengthen his smile as he waves a flippant hand that Marco can’t see. “Oh, y’know. It’s cold and I’m pretty sure I’m experiencing seasonal depression for the first time in my life, but other than that and the crippling isolation, I’m doing great!” 

His older brother rolls his eyes like Lance is joking, even though they both know he isn’t. His next question is even more grave than the first. “And Mamá?” 

“She’s . . .” Lance isn’t able to stop his smile from fading at that. He settles back into the cushions and sighs. “I don’t know. She’s not getting any better, but—she’s also not getting any worse? She’s just . . . sad all the time. I can hear her crying at night.” 

Marco’s troubled frown matches his own. “I wish . . . I wish she hadn’t decided to move. I hate that the two of you are out there alone.” 

And no—that doesn’t work, either. Marco is not supposed to worry about them. He has enough to worry about back home. “Hey,” Lance says, sitting up as if that makes him seem any less tired, any more confident. “Marco, we’re going to be okay. I can take care of Mamá.” 

Marco’s smile is sad and barely-there. “I know you can. But . . . you shouldn’t have to.” 

Lance doesn’t know what to say to that. The next minute on FaceTime passes in uncomfortable, strained silence. 

“Well I—” His brother clears his throat. “I should go. It’s my night to make dinner, and if I don’t start soon, the kids will riot.” 

Lance nods gravely. “Understandable. It’s spaghetti night. Best night of the week, right?” 

Marco’s next smile is less sad, but still fleeting when he says, “Yeah. Gotta go.  _ Cuídate mucho,  _ Lance.” 

Lance repeats the sentiment, and his phone beeps as the call disconnects. He sits there, phone clutched in hand in a lonely room, illuminated only by the single floor lamp at the end of the couch, until the silence becomes too much. Then he turns on the TV in the hopes that the noise will be enough to keep the solitude from swallowing him whole. 


	2. living a season of screaming

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so okay, i know, i knoW this is supposed to be a stupid twilight crack fanfiction, but theres angst in this chapter because i apparently cant write anything without making someone cry. i swear after this one we're going to get into the stupid glittering vampire nonsense. stick with me for a minute. also, thanks so much for the support on the first chapter, it means so much to me! you guys are great. 
> 
> and uh, slight trigger warnings for car accidents and blood? though if youve ever read/watched twilight, you probably were expecting that. anyway, enjoy!

Even though there’s a major part of him that still doesn’t want to acknowledge that this is his life now, Lance quickly settles into a rhythm. He gets up at  _ absolutely-not-o’clock  _ to have breakfast in complete and total silence, puts on the coffee, and answers late-night texts from Rachel that she’d probably sent him when the crushing pressure of pre-med school studying got to her. His mother’s bagel is toasted and her to-go cup is filled to the brim by the time she makes her way downstairs in her scrubs, and they trek together out into the frigid Washington winter to their car. 

True to the forecast, it  _ does  _ snow, and then it keeps snowing. It’s as miserable as Lance expected: floating shards of ice whipping at his face, air so cold that it turns his breath into clouds of gloom. He resigns himself to wearing the puffy blue coat every day and is forced by nature to turn in his trusty sneakers for winter boots. When he gets to school, he meets Hunk and occasionally Pidge by his locker and they look at memes or fret over the previous night’s homework until the bell rings, and then promises to meet them at lunch, where he’ll fawn over Allura and she’ll tolerate him with good-natured eyerolls. 

Lance settles into his classes. He figures out pretty quickly which classes he can coast through (English and Spanish, naturally) which ones he can’t _ (Mr. Shirogane’s Physics class, holy crow),  _ and the rest will be fine as long as he puts in a decent amount of effort. He learns the names and attached faces of his surrounding desk-mates. 

Keith does not show back up to class after the first day he met him. His friends (Lance’s friends, now) say absolutely nothing about that. 

When he gets home from school, he calls his family to check on how they’re doing. Life is getting back to normal for them, and he tells them (even though he doesn’t really feel it) that things are settling into some kind of normal for them, too. Which, objectively, Lance supposes is true. But it’s hard to think of anything as  _ normal  _ when there’s no sunshine overhead, when the weather gets legitimately below freezing and not just below seventy-two degrees (Lance’s previous standard of determining temperature), and when there isn’t a house full of people shouting at each other in Spanish or raiding the fridge or running up and down the hall. There’s no one to fight with over what to watch, there’s no one to steal blankets from or ask for help on his homework and no one to help  _ with  _ homework. It’s just him and his mother, and most days, it feels like she isn’t really here either. They eat dinner together most nights, but it’s strained, and any attempt at conversation fizzles out too quickly. And then she disappears into her room, the door shutting permanently for the night, and Lance gets this ball of emotion trapped in his windpipe and he wants nothing more than to scream every time the night ends like this.

But he can’t scream; he can’t be upset, he can’t struggle, because she’s hurting enough without him adding to the number of things she can’t fix. So at night Lance lays awake in a too-cold bed, staring blankly at the ceiling and unable to find sleep as his mother’s sobs bleed through the walls of their empty house. 

Then he closes his eyes, imagines standing on a white-sanded beach with the sunkissed blue waves rolling in to blanket his toes, imagines the flash of his father’s smile and the sound of his mother’s laugh and the happy screeches of his niece and nephew in the distance, and this is the image he holds in his mind until finally, unconsciousness reaches with steady hands to pull him down into its embrace. 

And then he wakes up, and the day repeats itself just like that. Again, and again, and again. 

Until one day, Lance walks into Physics, and lo and behold: Keith. Sitting in his seat like it hasn’t been vacant for an entire academic week—Lance wonders distantly how he got away with that, because school attendance is a  _ thing  _ they grade you for—leaning back and chilling in his leather jacket and his stupid mullet like he lives in that chair and never plans on leaving. 

“I was beginning to think you weren’t coming back,” Lance remarks loftily as he slings his backpack onto the table. “I was going to put a wig mullet on your chair and call it Keith two-point-oh, and then I was going to walk in every day and say,  _ ‘Hi, Keith. How’s it going, Keith? Also, you stink like a middle-schooler with a can of Axe body spray, Keith.’”  _

Keith blinks confused, violet eyes up at him, and Lance ignores the way his heart tap-dances.  _ Not now, heart.  _ “I . . . don’t know how to respond to that,” he says slowly. “But . . . I’m back? I was—sick.” 

Lance lifts a skeptical eyebrow. “Must’ve been quite a stomach bug. Or whatever you had.” 

“Yes,” Keith says stiffly. “A stomach bug. It was terrible.” 

His shoulders look so tense, like he’s a turtle trying to revert into its shell, but he at least isn’t sniffing the air like a bloodhound, and he doesn’t look like he’s about to run out of the classroom. So Lance lets it go, opens his notebook, and prepares to suffer. 

It’s at the end of class, as everyone’s packing up and he’s getting ready to leave, that he feels Keith tap him on the shoulder. “Hey,” the mullet-haired guy says, sounding strangely hesitant, “I’ll see you around?” 

Lance isn’t sure what it is about this guy that makes him turn every sentence into a question, but he takes this one for what it is. It seems (at least, to Lance) like the question Keith is really trying to ask is:  _ sorry that I was so weird the day I met you, if I was really as weird as you think. Do-over?  _

Lance has two options here, but he knows which one he’s going to make even before he opens his mouth. Because yes, Keith is weird, and annoyingly hot, and objectively a fashion disaster who wears cropped leather jackets and purple contacts. But he’s also friends with Lance’s new friends, and Lance might be an asshole, but he’s not an  _ asshole.  _ So he smiles, and he slings his backpack over his shoulder, and he says, “See ya, Mullet.” 

He’s in a strangely good mood when he gets home, and he tells himself it has nothing to do with Keith. After all, it would be stupid for one slightly-amicable conversation with a guy he doesn’t even really know to flip his whole perspective on his regular, monotonously  _ blah  _ day. 

His phone begins to ring:  _ Marco calling . . .  _ and his smile finds its way to his face, more easily than it has in days, when his niece’s and nephew’s matching grins pop onto the screen. 

  
  


_____

  
  


Lance wakes up from a miserable night’s sleep and just—doesn’t want to get out of bed. 

He  _ can’t.  _ He thinks about sitting up, thinks about putting on that stupid blue coat and going out into the cold, and he  _ can’t do it today.  _ He wants to close his eyes and sleep again and wake up at  _ home,  _ with his sky blue walls and the sun shining through his thin curtains. He wants Rachel to sit at the foot of his bed with a plate of burnt toast for them to share, and he wants Nadia and Sylvio to pile into bed with him like a couple of playful puppies, and he wants Luis to play his death metal music so loudly that it gives everyone in the house a headache. He wants Veronica to lovingly scold him into finishing his homework, and he wants to hear his mother laugh like the wind chimes on their front porch again, and he wants his  _ papí— _

Lance’s throat swells up with so much sad  _ emotion,  _ and he can’t—he can’t  _ get up— _

His mother raps on the door: once, twice, three times. “Lance?” she calls, soft but firm. “It’s time to go. Are you ready?” 

Lance gets up. He throws on the first pair of jeans his hands land on, brushes his teeth as he shoves his feet into shoes—his  _ sneakers,  _ because he’s not putting up with shitty snow boots today—and grabs his bag, feeling immensely grateful to his last night’s self for thinking ahead. His mother is silent when he meets her at the door, and he feels a tiny flash of anger that immediately fizzles out.  _ Why won’t you say  _ anything? he wants to shout at her.  _ Why can’t you just ask me what’s wrong?  _ But he doesn’t ask her either of those questions, instead following her wordlessly out to the car. He slept through his alarm, so this morning neither of them are getting their necessary dosage of caffeine. All around, today is fleshing out to be a really,  _ really  _ shitty day. 

He stands on the curb when she drops him off and watches her drive away, feeling miserable and exhausted and, inexplicably, like a child being abandoned. Some days, he watches her leave and wonders if she’ll come back. And isn’t that an awful thing for him to wonder? It must make him a terrible,  _ awful  _ son, Lance thinks, because his mother has been through a lot, but she would never abandon her children. Except— _ didn’t  _ she? Hasn’t she, in a way? Lance knows it isn’t the same, because all of his siblings are grown, but she  _ did  _ leave them. And she may have brought him with her, but she hasn’t  _ been here _ for him. This move to a random,  _ meaningless  _ town across the entire  _ country  _ from their family and everything they knew had  _ nothing  _ to do with Lance or his feelings. It’s been all about  _ her,  _ and how  _ she  _ is hurting, and how  _ she  _ wants to move on and start over. And she’d never even  _ asked  _ Lance what he wanted or needed—

In retrospect, it’s like one of those cinematic moments where all of the loose threads come together to form a seamless, heart-stopping climax. He sees this unremarkable rock at the side of the curb and feels a sudden, primal  _ need  _ to take his rage out on it. When he poises his foot to kick, his sneaker slips on the ice and sends him plummeting into the road. And he doesn’t see the car until it’s too late. 

He falls face-first onto the pavement as this awful, terrible  _ BANG!  _ resounds over him, and he doesn’t have time to really think about what’s just happened when a moment later there’s shouting. A familiar voice saying his name:  _ “Lance? Lance!”  _ Someone is turning him onto his side, assessing the damage as someone else shouts for help, and there’s something soft beneath Lance’s head and suddenly, he’s looking up into familiar purple eyes, bright with worry. Except, wait—they aren’t  _ quite  _ purple, Lance realizes now. There’s something different about them now. They’re more indigo now, infused with the deep blue of midnight, not quite the same saturated violet as before. Lance is  _ sure  _ they were different before. 

“Are those fake?” he mumbles, because his filter has been temporarily taken off, and while Keith’s brows furrow together in confusion and concern, Lance fixates on something over his shoulder. A dent in the front of the car that almost barreled into him, five small indents like . . . like fingertips.  _ But that’s crazy,  _ Lance thinks. He must be delirious. 

“Come on, we’ve gotta get you to the hospital,” Keith is saying, trying to slowly coax Lance into a sitting position. Lance just sort of goes limp against his shoulder, squeezing his eyes shut so he doesn’t have to look at the car anymore. In his head, something is slamming itself repeatedly against his skull.  _ Bang! Bang! BANG!  _

By the time the ambulance shows up, there’s a crowd of students around them and Mr. Shirogane pushing his way through to the center. “What  _ happened  _ here? Lance, are you alright?” he demands, and when Lance only turns his face more into Keith’s shoulder, he turns to his brother. “Keith, what’s going on?” 

“You don’t actually smell bad,” Lance mumbles into Keith’s neck, frowning at how unpleasantly cold his skin is. It’s probably just from being outside for so long. But it also must’ve started raining, because now his neck is all  _ wet  _ and it’s getting on Lance’s face. 

“Make room!” someone shouts, and then someone  _ else  _ is shoving their way into the friendship circle, and Lance tries to protest when he realizes that it’s actually a pair of paramedics with a stretcher. “Guys, I’m  _ fine,”  _ he tries to protest, waving his hand in a loose attempt to push away the lady reaching for him. “I don’t need this . . . this  _ fanfare.”  _ But no one seems to believe his assurances of his own well-being (even though  _ he  _ would know better than anyone else, wouldn’t he?) because from one moment to the next, he’s moved from sitting on icy pavement to the inside of the ambulance, and someone is sliding in next to him while the paramedics make a big fuss over something going on with his face, apparently. “My face is perfect,” he mutters to the, quite frankly,  _ hurtful  _ woman, and he turns and realizes that oh, Keith is still here. “Keith, tell this woman that my face is beautiful.” 

“Um.” Keith blinks, looking strangely out of it and worried, and woah, there’s  _ a lot  _ of blood on his neck. He should maybe get that checked out. Lance is going to tell the paramedic lady that she should  _ really  _ be fussing over Keith, but then the dark-haired boy turns to her and uncertainly says, “Lance’s face is beautiful?” 

A sentence framed as a question. Typical Keith. It’s adorable. The paramedic sighs, like this is the sort of interaction she sees all the time in her line of work. “Yeah, yeah. I get it—young love, seeing beauty in your significant other even when there’s blood pouring from his nose. You have a lovely relationship, kids. Also, your boyfriend here almost definitely has a concussion. So prepare to have your romantic vision shattered when—” 

The ambulance jostles and it feels weirdly like airplane turbulence. Lance feels dizzy all of a sudden, scrabbling for purchase on Keith’s shoulder right before he leans over and vomits all over his shoes. 

The paramedic sighs again, like this is just a regular day. “That happens,” she concludes her own sentence, even though no one really needed her to. 

It’s later, sitting in a hospital room and just beginning to come back to himself, that Lance registers what’s just happened.  _ BANG.  _ He was almost hit by a car. One minute he was standing, perfectly fine and intact, on the curb, and the next he was . . . 

When Lance closes his eyes, it’s not himself getting hit by a car. It’s a head-on collision, and he isn’t there, but he can imagine the screech of brakes and his mother’s screams as if he was. 

His eyes fly open.  _ His mother.  _

“Keith,” Lance says, reaching out and snagging the sleeve of Keith’s jacket, where he stand off to the side of the exam table. He looks up into Keith’s eyes and pleads, “Don’t tell my mamá. Please,  _ please _ Keith,  _ don’t tell her.”  _

“I—” Once again, Keith’s dark eyes fill with confusion, with alarm. “What? Lance—” 

“Don’t tell my mother,” he  _ begs,  _ and sniffles around his sore, bandaged nose, and  _ shit,  _ it hurts. His eyes well up with tears, partly because of the pain but mostly because of how much today  _ sucks,  _ and he feels something weighted settle onto his back—Keith’s hand, like he’s trying to comfort him—but then the door is bursting open and a hurricane is bursting through: panic and fear and flurries of fragmented sentences and harried steps. Keith’s hand is gone and replaced by the familiar, warm hold of his mother as she pulls him into her arms. 

_ “Lancito, mijo, my Lance, ¿estás bien? Lance, Lance.”  _ It’s all she can say—his name, between her terrified sobs and and nods as Lance lifts his hands to put around her, as he chokes out around his own spilling tears:  _ “Sí, estoy bien, estoy bien, Mamí.”  _

He doesn’t notice it when Keith slips silently out the door; he buries his head in his mother’s shoulder and cries until it becomes too painful to do so, and then he just closes his eyes and tries to catch his breath while his mother runs her hands up and down his spine.  _ “Estás bien. Estás bien,”  _ she tells him, tells them both, trying to comfort them, trying to calm their terrified and aching hearts. But Lance knows that no matter how many times she says it, it’s not going to make them feel any better, or any less afraid. 

_ “You’re okay. You’re okay.” But I’m not,  _ he wants to say, wants to sob, wants to  _ scream. I’m not, Mamá. I’m not okay.  _ He doesn’t know how to tell her. He  _ can’t.  _ He closes his eyes and bites down on the words and listens to the sound of his mother’s cries until every unbearable, fear-ridden note is permanently seared into his brain. 

  
  


_____

  
  


So, maybe Lance still has some unaddressed trauma leftover from the accident. 

Cut him some slack. It’s not  _ just  _ him—it’s his whole family. They’re so good at talking, but not so much when it comes to the things that really matter. They can talk about which cousin is marrying who and where they’re going on vacation next summer and what celebrity is involved in this week’s scandal, but when it comes to the things that hurt? To the things that leave them aching and bloody and tear-stricken, trapped in hospital waiting rooms while somewhere else a monitor flatlines and someone yells:  _ “He’s crashing!”?  _ They can’t do it. They can’t talk, they can only cry and try to bury it and move on. In his mother’s case, move  _ away.  _ As if taking them away from the scene of the accident could remove them from the tragedy. If only it were that easy. 

They’re all shaken up by the morning’s events; that evening, he’s on the receiving end of the most emotionally-draining FaceTime he’s ever had to be a part of. He hopes he’ll never have to be part of something quite like this ever again. His mother holds him tucked against her side on the sofa, wrapped in two blankets and then her arms for good measure. “I’m so glad you’re okay,” Rachel says, and the others echo the sentiment, and Sylvio sniffles tearfully and says, _“Abuela,_ Uncle Lance, when are you coming home? You have to come home, so—so no one else dies,” and everyone’s faces screw up in pain, but none of them can think of anything to say. 

“C’mon, Sylvi,” Marco eventually murmurs, plucking his son up and scooping him away, out of frame. “We should let Uncle Lance rest. It’s been a long day for him.” And soon everyone is quietly saying their goodbyes, and the phone screen goes black, and Lance bites his lip so he won’t cry and leans back to bury his head in his mother’s shoulder. 

“I can’t lose you, too,” his mother whispers against his head, and Lance squeezes his eyes shut as hot tears press against his lashes. “I can’t lose anyone else, Lance.” He falls asleep like that, nestled against his mother in the way he used to fall asleep when he was small, imagining that when he wakes up, his father will be there, too. 

When he wakes up, his mother is gone (she hasn’t gone far; he can hear her in the kitchen), and the doorbell is ringing. 

“Hey,” Hunk says, his sunshine subdued as he fidgets with the air-sealed container in his hands. Pidge, standing at his elbow, looks no less unsure. “I, uh, we didn’t know if you’d want company right now, but Keith told us you were pretty shaken up after what happened? So I made cookies. And Pidge helped. We can make something else, though, if you hate cookies or you’re allergic to peanut butter—” he rambles, but Lance stops him before he can get too far, plucking the container from his hands with a weak smile. “Cookies are great. Thanks, buddy,” he says. 

He feels movement behind him, and then his mother is standing at his side. “You must be Lance’s friends,” she says, and it’s—the first time she’s spoken warmly in  _ weeks.  _ “Would you like to stay for dinner?” 

It’s the first time since the move that it’s been more than just the two of them in this house. They sit at the kitchen table that’s meant for four people—entirely full for the first time since its purchase—and let Lance’s friends fill the air of their quiet home with voices untinged by sadness, or loss, or emptiness. It’s the first time that this house hasn’t felt lonely since the McClains moved into it. As strange as it is, considering the day they’ve had, it’s the first time they’ve felt . . . almost okay. 

Lance catches his mother’s gaze over the table and she smiles tiredly; he smiles back. They aren’t pretending anymore, at least, he thinks, and that . . . well. It isn’t perfect—it isn’t  _ home.  _ But maybe it’s a start. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i swear this is the last of the major angst. stay tuned next week for lance: stupid in seattle, and keith wanting to murder him for almost getting killed all the time.


	3. yet here you are

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so i was thinking this would be a once-weekly kind of updating thing, but then i wrote fifteen more pages of this yesterday and since i have the impulse control of a cat, i was like "i rEally want to upload the next chapter." so here we are, hopefully with some amusement to start your weekend. also, thanks so much for all the love last chapter, glad you guys enjoyed the angst! hopefully you'll enjoy the vampire shenanigans as much, if not more <3

“I need to get out of here,” Lance declares as he dramatically slams his lunch tray onto the table. It jostles his food, and he’s barely able to stabilize his apple before it falls to the ground. 

All conversation at the table ceases. Hunk looks at him in quiet concern. “Like, out of school . . .?” 

_ “No.”  _ Lance plunges his spork into something vaguely noodle-y. He thinks it might be mac & cheese. It’s pretty alright, once you get around the plastic taste. “Like, out of this  _ town.  _ It’s so  _ boring  _ around here, and this entire week everyone’s been coming up to me and going:  _ ‘Lance, are you alright?’  _ or  _ ‘Lance, I totally thought you were dead for a second,’  _ or  _ ‘Lance, even though you look hideous with you broken nose do you want to go with me to spring formal?’  _ If one more person asks me on a date out of  _ pity,  _ I might actually explode. Do you guys want to see me explode? Because I don’t.” 

“I think seeing you explode might be kind of fun?” Pidge offers, because she’s sensitive like that. 

Lance rolls his eyes. “Whatever. Anyway, I think I’m going to go to the city this Saturday. Check out the sights. Anyone want to come with?” 

Hunk’s face immediately scrunches up in guilt. “Sorry, buddy. I would, but . . . I kind of promised my moms I’d take a shift at the restaurant on Saturday. They haven’t had a day off in like, weeks.” 

Pidge, Allura, and Keith all exchange uncomfortable looks amongst themselves. “Same here, but uh, we’ve kind of had this camping thing planned with our families—” 

Lance makes a face. “Ew, say no more.”  _ Camping.  _ The very thought of sleeping in a tent and sharing air with swarms of bugs makes his skin crawl. Still, he slumps in defeat. “Well, that super sucks then, because I was kind of counting on one of you to be my ride. I have no idea how I’m going to convince my mom to let me take the car to a city I’ve never been to before, especially by myself.” 

Suddenly, a curious, silken voice speaks up behind him. “You need a ride to Seattle this Saturday?” 

Lance swivels around. Standing behind him is the pretty blonde girl he’s seen around; he thinks her name is Nyla or Nova or something like that. She looks like the kind of girl who could easily fit the stereotypical cheerleader in a bad made-for-teens movie, but she’d decided to go punk instead. Ripped black jeans, purple lipstick, multiple piercings. Kind of like Keith, but without the bad hair. Or the angry eyes. 

“Uh, yeah,” he says, “How long were you listening to our conversation, exactly? Because that’s kind of creepy. Unless, of course, you happen to be going to the city this weekend and are offering me a ride. Then forget I ever pointed out any sketchy behavior.” 

The girl smirks.  _ Nora?  _ he thinks. “You’re cute. Me and my friend Rolo are going up this weekend, if you’re interested?” 

“Oh, cool. That’s . . . really cool. Thanks, I’d love to,” Lance says, blinking in surprise. “Also—this is a bit awkward. What’s your name again?” 

The girl doesn’t take offense; if anything, she seems more amused. “It’s Nyma.” 

_ Nyma.  _ That’s a pretty name, Lance thinks. “Nyma. I’m Lance.” 

She smirks again. “I know. Give me your number.” Lance does so without question, and soon enough he’s watching her flounce off with what might be a dumb, infatuated look on his face. When he turns back to his table of friends, they’re all staring at him. 

“You’re not seriously going to Seattle with Nyma and Rolo,” Pidge flatly says. Lance prickles up in immediate defense. “What? Why shouldn’t I?  _ You’re  _ abandoning me for some dumb  _ camping  _ trip.” 

“I don’t mean to sound judgmental,” Allura begins diplomatically, “but Nyma and Rolo have a . . . history of sketchy behavior. They tend to wind up in—legally questionable situations.” 

“What, like they’ve been arrested?” 

“On multiple occasions.” 

Lance just rolls his eyes. “Whatever. Look, if I judged people on their proclivities toward criminal activity, I wouldn’t be friends with  _ Keith,  _ would I? I think I can make my own decisions when it comes to making friends. Thanks for trying to look out for me, though.” 

Lance is eating his words when, after an  _ hour  _ of waiting for the two delinquents in question to show back up at their meeting place, they have yet to appear. He taps his foot impatiently as he scrolls his phone—they haven't even _texted_ him, the jerkholes—, looks up at the rapidly darkening sky and up and down the street, and sends a series of texts to the group chat to voice his growing irritation. 

**(7:11 PM)** _ alright so I MAY have made a ~slight~ error in judgment _

**(7:11 PM)** _ nyma and rolo have abandoned me _

**(7:12 PM)** _ there are busses in seattle right _

He’s not expecting a response, and one doesn’t come. Sighing, Lance switches over to Google and starts searching for the nearest bus station. Evidently there’s one not too far away, so with another lamenting sigh, he stands and starts walking. 

Google certainly seems to have a convoluted way of guiding people around, though, because between one moment and the next Lance is cutting down an alleyway that  _ definitely  _ looks kind of sketchy, and then turning onto another open street that’s eerily deserted—kind of like the long, dusty stretch of road in the town of an Old Western movie. He half-expects a tumbleweed to bounce across the street. 

A tumbleweed does not roll onto the scene. Instead, a group of four worryingly tall figures emerge from another alleyway. 

_ Quiznack.  _ Lance doesn’t know what that word means, but he’s heard Allura say it on multiple occasions and he thinks it sums up this situation pretty well. This situation is definitely, Very Not Good.  _ No Bueno.  _ He takes an uneasy step back as one of the figures steps beneath a streetlight and something that is nauseatingly similar to a knife glints in their hand. 

“What’ve you got in those bags, pretty boy?” the person growls, and for a stupidly long moment, Lance has no idea what they’re talking about. Then he looks down and thinks:  _ today really was not a good day to buy expensive shoes.  _

“Oh, well, nothing of any real importance,” Lance begins to ramble, because rambling is Lance’s default when he’s nervous, and right now he is very,  _ very  _ nervous. “I had to stop by Barnes & Noble for this super lame study guide for my dumb Physics class, and then my mom asked me to go by and stock up on like,  _ all  _ the vanilla candles at Yankee Candle—” 

The figures are slowly creeping toward him like lanky, predatory house cats, and Lance thinks he probably needs to watch National Geographic more if  _ house cats  _ is the most dangerous animal he can come up with. His heart is pounding in his throat now as he realizes that this is a situation that could escalate very, very quickly and end super,  _ super  _ badly. 

_ I’m about to die.  _ Lance swallows down his panic and forces a laugh. It rings out high and fretful in this pocket of quiet. “I know, vanilla is the  _ lamest  _ candle scent, am I right? But she insisted and I was like,  _ ‘alright, but first I have to pick up the dog’s prescription.’ _ I have a dog, I  _ totally  _ have a dog, his name is  _ Pastelito _ and he’s a teacup poodle and he looks  _ adorable  _ in Christmas sweaters—” 

He glances as surreptitiously as he can back the way he came from, wondering if he could risk making a break for it and spilling back onto a busier street before the potential muggers  _ (or murderers,  _ his brain unhelpfully supplies) catch up to him. But then one of the figures  _ lunges,  _ grabs him around the wrist and the bag with his shoes falls to the ground. He’s so distraught over this that for a moment he forgets the bigger issue:  _ holy crow someone’s holding a knife to my throat.  _

This kind of disastrous scenario only happens in movies. And to him, Lance laments. Disaster follows Lance  _ everywhere.  _

“Look, you can take the stuff if you want, but I  _ have  _ to get home, man. My dog needs his special medication before dinner and—” 

_ Why  _ is he still rambling about a  _ fictional  _ dog? Lance can’t believe  _ these  _ are going to be his last words. 

It’s almost like a flash of lightning, how quickly the next sequence of actions occurs. Lance is a split-second away from shutting his eyes so he doesn’t have to watch his life flash before them when at the end of the street, a spotlight turns on and a  _ motorcycle is speeding towards him at a speed that should be impossible, holy shit.  _ The muggers-slash-murderers disperse in panic as the driver flips up the visor of his helmet and shouts:  _ “GET ON!”  _

It’s  _ Keith. _ Lance is so relieved that he doesn’t even think to question it, just hops right onto the seat behind him, arms instinctively winding their way around Keith’s torso. In his head, he’d always pictured this moment as a lot more romantic, but he supposes he’ll take what he can get; he presses his face to the other boy’s shoulderblade as they whiz away, finally closing his eyes as his tentative friend leads him away from danger. His heart is still racing when the motorcycle comes to a stop, and he doesn’t even realize it  _ has  _ stopped until Keith nudges at him a few times. 

“Sorry. Thanks for that, back there,” Lance says, slightly shaky as Keith extends a hand to help him off the motorcycle, like he’s some kind of bad-boy fairytale gentleman. “I kinda thought I was going to die for a second.” 

“That does seem to be the theme with you,” Keith dryly says, but Lance sees through it. He’s rattled too.  _ “How  _ do you always manage to find the most dangerous situation and then poke your way right into the middle of it?” 

“Oh, so now me getting almost  _ murdered  _ is  _ my  _ fault?” Indignation flares up in Lance, draws him upright until he can almost forget that he was point five seconds away from trembling before. 

Keith puffs up right back, like a frazzled cat.  _ “Yeah,  _ it  _ is.  _ Allura  _ told  _ you coming here with Nyma and Rolo was a bad idea, and you blew her off!” 

“Oh, well  _ excuse me  _ for wanting to get out of my head for a little bit while everyone  _ abandoned  _ me,” Lance snaps before he can realize, oops, that sounds suspiciously more personal than he wanted to go. It stops Keith short—he blinks rapidly like someone’s just thwacked him between the eyes. And then he opens his mouth like he’s about to say something uncomfortably sensitive, so Lance backs up a bit and runs a hand through his hair and goes:  _ “Shit.  _ My  _ shoes.”  _

Keith closes his mouth, brows furrowing as he glances down at the sneakers in question, then back up to his face. “What about them?” 

“They’re still  _ back there,”  _ Lance cries out, his distress growing the longer he thinks about it. “I bought a pair of shoes today, a  _ really nice  _ pair of shoes, and I dropped them when the guy went for my throat and— _ man.  _ My  _ shoes.”  _

“You just had a potentially very traumatizing experience,” Keith says slowly, “and you’re worrying about . . . shoes?” 

_ “They were really freakin’ nice shoes, Keith.”  _

Keith sighs, glances up and down the street they’re on, and Lance suddenly realizes that oh yeah, when Keith parked, he had to park  _ somewhere.  _ This place in question is the parking lot outside of some restaurant, and there are some truly ambrosial smells floating through the air immediately surrounding them. Lance’s stomach rumbles, reminding him suddenly that he hasn’t eaten since that pastry in a coffee shop earlier. 

“Let me get you something to eat,” Keith says, “Then I’ll take you to the shoe store and buy you a new pair.” 

“Wait—you’re offering to buy me  _ food?  _ Like a  _ date?”  _ Lance immediately perks up, and while Keith flounders over that he sighs and shakes his head. “But seriously, don’t worry about the shoes. I meant it when I said they were pricey, and like, you  _ did  _ just save my life, so you don’t  _ have  _ to . . .” 

Keith eyes him for a moment, still flustered even as he says, “Money really isn’t a problem for me. I could totally buy you another pair.” 

Lance just grins at him, slings an arm over his shoulder, and starts to walk them towards the restaurant’s entrance. “That’s sweet, really, but that kinda seems more like a second date courtship activity, don’t you think? Like, buy me dinner first,  _ then  _ shoes. If you do both at once, you might make me swoon like a Southern belle at the ball. Be still, my heart." 

“Would you stop  _ joking  _ for a second? You just almost  _ died,”  _ Keith snaps, unexpectedly angry. Lance drops his arm in shock. 

“I . . . why do you sound so certain about that?” Lance uneasily shifts on his feet. The grave look on his friend’s face seriously isn’t helping. 

“I just—I just know, okay?” Keith looks uncomfortable now, looking stubbornly away from Lance as he pushes into the restaurant. Lance follows hesitantly, the hostess eyeballing them before zeroing in on Keith with a sparkling smile. “Table for two?” she says. 

“Yes,” Keith replies stiffly. She leads them to a booth near the back, tells them a waiter will be right with them, and as she walks away Lance goes, “She totally thinks you’re hot.” 

“Yeah,” the darker-haired boy says, uncaring as he flips open the menu. “I know.” 

Lance sits up, indignant, until he thinks about what a  _ weird  _ thing that is for Keith to say. Keith isn’t exactly known for his narcissism—in fact, Lance doesn’t think he’s ever brushed his hair,  _ ever,  _ and he’s definitely never seen him use his unfortunately fortunate looks to dazzle someone before. Keith’s never shown any interest in people as a concept, let alone dating them. 

He thinks about Keith, just a few moments ago, saying:  _ I just know, okay?  _ And though it  _ sounds  _ crazy in his head—

“You’re a mind-reader,” he blurts. “You can read minds, can’t you?” 

Keith, despite his implacable face,  _ stiffens. Holy quiznack.  _ “You’re crazy,” he says, but there’s a note of audible  _ panic  _ in his tone. 

Lance sits up straighter. “Uh, I was half-joking, but  _ what the crap, man?  _ You can  _ read minds?”  _

“Shout it a little louder, why don’t you?” Keith hisses. That’s when Lance realizes that oops, he’s attracting a small audience. He waves both hands above his head and announces: “Nothing’s going on here! Please continue enjoying your fine meals in this establishment!” Keith reaches to yank his hands down, but it seems to work; people go back to what they were doing like there  _ aren’t  _ two potentially insane teenagers sitting near them. 

“You can read minds,” Lance whispers when the attention’s been diverted. “Can’t you?” 

Keith scowls at his menu, very obviously ignoring Lance’s stare. But finally he grumbles,  _ “Yes,  _ okay? Are you going to call me crazy now?” 

“Oh, definitely. You’re crazy,” Lance says. Then the waiter shows up to take their drink orders, and he prattles something off and Keith requests water because he’s boring. As soon as she’s gone, he hones in on Keith again. “Alright, explain your mind powers now. In full detail. Go.” 

Keith prickles up defensively. “I thought you said I was crazy.” 

“Well,  _ yeah.  _ But that’s just because you’re  _ you. _ All . . . Keith-like. But this is . . .  _ interesting.”  _ Lance waves his hand around, like that’ll further explain the point he’s trying to get across. “Look, just explain your wacky mind powers to me, then I’ll determine whether or not you need to be put in a psych ward.” 

His mind-reading friend sighs, shoulders slumping in defeat. “Fine. I guess you were going to find out at some point anyway, since everyone else has pretty much adopted you into the group.” Their waiter returns yet again, this time bearing drinks, and Lance orders dinner and Keith orders nothing and when they’re alone again, Keith fidgets with the paper coating of his straw and begrudgingly begins, “I have this . . . gift, I guess. Yeah, I can read minds, but it’s . . . a bit more complicated than that.” 

“Can the others in the group read minds? Do  _ I  _ get to read minds when I unlock a certain level? Like, instead of friendship bracelets, it’s a friendship mind ability that we all share? I want telekinesis.” 

Keith blinks blandly at him. “Telepathy.” 

“What?” 

_ “Telepathy,  _ you want—” Keith huffs in exasperation. “Okay, I’m giving up on wondering why I can’t read  _ your  _ mind. Clearly, it’s because you don’t have  _ any  _ thoughts  _ whatsoever  _ in your brain.” 

“Hey!” Lance protests, indignant until he realizes. “Wait—what do you mean you can’t read  _ my  _ mind?” 

“Just that,” Keith says, back to monotone as quickly as he inflected. “Ever since you showed up, I’ve been trying to read your mind. I can read  _ everyone’s  _ mind except yours. It’s weird.” 

“Huh . . .” Lance frowns, suddenly, strangely upset. He just found out his friend can read every mind except for  _ his.  _ Maybe his head really is just empty space. He sadly picks apart a garlic knot. “So I’m just, what? Extra dumb, then?” 

“What? No, that’s not what I . . .” Keith trails off, seeming to realize suddenly that Lance’s mood has dropped significantly. “You . . . take things personally a lot, don’t you?” 

_ “No,”  _ Lance sniffles. Crap, he’s more upset than he thought. “I take it perfectly neutrally when my mind-reading friend tells me I’m too dumb to have thoughts. I totally  _ don’t care. At all.”  _

“You totally do,” Keith infers with a sigh. “Listen, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to call you dumb. I don’t think that. You’re just—you’re an anomaly, and it frustrates me, okay? I don’t like not understanding. I don’t like puzzles I can’t solve.” 

Lance is somewhat mollified, but his gaze remains sullenly fixed on his entree. “Does this have something to do with why you hated me when we first met?” 

“I didn’t hate you when we first met,” Keith argues, then sighs again. “But . . . not really. That startled me, sure, but there was—something else.” 

“What?” Lance, in spite of himself, is curious. 

Keith just shakes his head, then grins, a subtle gleam making itself known in his eyes when he says, “You’re a smart person. I’m going to make you figure it out yourself.” 

“What? No, that’s not fair,” Lance complains, but Keith just snickers at him and says, “Finish your food, Lance.” 

Lance picks his fork up and starts eating. Things quickly get awkward though, with him eating and Keith silently staring, so eventually he cracks under the pressure. “Alright, so there’s something else.  _ How  _ did you find me, just now? Like, were you stalking me?” 

“You have your location turned on on your SnapChat. Which, you should change that by the way—do you know how easy it would be for a creep to stalk you?” Keith seems momentarily sidetracked, worried annoyance pulling at his eyebrows, and it’s so cute that Lance doesn’t have the heart to remind him that  _ he  _ just stalked him like a creep. “Anyway, after you sent your texts, the others got worried and sent me after you to make sure you weren’t in imminent danger.” 

Lance bobs his head along, because that totally makes sense, until . . . “Wait,” he frowns, “but that doesn’t explain how you  _ got here  _ so fast. That was within, what, a fifteen-minute time interval?” 

Keith flashes another amused grin. It’s slightly off-putting on his face, like he doesn’t use the feature all that much, but Lance thinks he could get used to seeing it on him. It’s . . . kind of nice, in a feral, slightly-deranged-kitten sort of way. He really needs to stop comparing things to cats. “Figure it out,” is the only information he’s willing to impart (meaning, zero information at all, absolutely  _ nothing), _ and Lance scowls as Keith’s rare attractiveness dissipates. Except, oh wait, no it hasn’t, it’s  _ Keith,  _ he never stops being attractive. What a jerk. 

“You’re the Flash,” he tries anyway. Keith snorts. 

“Try the opposite of the Flash.” 

Lance frowns. “I, uh. Don’t actually watch that show. Who’s the Flash’s enemy, again?” 

Keith rolls his eyes, but Lance thinks he detects a hint of— _ dare he say? _ —fondness. “It has nothing to do with the Flash,” he elaborates. “Okay, that’s all. That is all you are getting out of me.” 

Lance pouts, but he’s actually pretty okay with that. He’s tired enough to let the mystery slide for now, anyway. 

Keith drives him home after paying for dinner, like a true gentleman. Sitting parked outside his house, not quite ready to let go of Keith’s torso and head inside, Lance heaves a somewhat-exhausted sigh and says, “Hey, Keith? Thanks. Seriously.” 

“It’s no problem,” Keith tells him, and Lance is glad he can’t see his face, because he doesn’t want to see whatever emotions are fighting across his face right now. He feels like they’d be kind of overwhelming. “I’m glad you’re okay,” he softly adds. 

“Yeah, me too.” Lance smiles, this fleeting, fluttery thing. He squeezes Keith’s torso once in a brief, weird hug before he hops off his motorcycle. And that reminds him—“I  _ knew  _ you drove a motorcycle. You just have that  _ vibe,  _ you know?” 

Keith just blinks at him. His eyes glow strangely in this light, like a—no, you know what,  _ no more cat comparisons. Keith is not a cat.  _ “What.” 

Lance shakes his head, another wry smile twitching up the corners of his mouth. “Nothing. Anyway, maybe for our next date,  _ you  _ can drive me somewhere so I don’t have to almost die first.” 

He’s expecting Keith to protest again, or turn into a tomato, or literally explode in a puff of smoke due to stress. But instead, Keith bites his lip, nods, and says, “I think that sounds kind of nice.” 

Lance’s heart starts to pitter-pat in his chest, like he’s about to have a heart attack but like, in a good way. But then Keith, the jerk, flashes another antagonizing grin and says, “After all,  _ someone’s  _ gotta keep your disaster self out of trouble.” 

_ “Hey. Rude.”  _ Lance puffs up in vexation, ready for another argument, but Keith revs his engine before Lance can even get a word in. He rides away, Lance staring in utter disbelief and fond irritation, as Keith’s laughter carries on the wind like the most annoyingly beautiful song he’s heard in a long time. 

  
  


_____

  
  


“So, Nadia, turns out you were  _ right.  _ Keith  _ does  _ drive a motorcycle.” 

_ “HA!”  _ his niece screeches in glee, hands flying into the air to display her victory as she whirls on her brother. “You owe me five bucks!” 

While Sylvio pouts in disappointment, their father says offscreen, “Who  _ taught you how to bet? It was Lance, wasn’t it? Give me the phone so I can yell at your uncle, now!”  _ This just sends the children giggling, racing away from their father with the phone passing between them, the images blurring until one of them accidentally ends the call. Chuckling, Lance tosses his phone to the side and stands, stretching his hands above his head right as the doorbell rings. 

Frowning, he goes to the door to answer it, but when he swings it open he finds no one standing on his porch. He glances left and right, finding  _ no one  _ around, not even a car driving away. Then he looks down and sees a wrapped box labelled:  _ To Lance.  _

The box could be filled with some kind of poison, or maybe it’s some prank gift left by someone from school. Still,  _ curiosity  _ might as well be his middle name, so he carts the box inside, plops it on the coffee table, and rips the paper off. 

Beneath it is a familiar label. And when he opens it—

He blinks, and then he stares. And stares. 

“What the  _ quiznack?”  _

  
  


_____

  
  


_ “Who  _ sent me these?” Lance demands, hopping up onto the counter and waving erratically at his feet. Hunk, working the evening shift at his moms’ diner, does not look up from where he’s pouring coffee. He gets a couple side-eyed stares from the patrons, but this has become such a common occurrence that everyone’s pretty much accepted it. Hunk himself has stopped trying to scold Lance off the counters. He refuses to change his unruly ways. 

When Hunk’s finished serving the customer, he finally glances up at Lance, then to his colorful-shoe-clad feet. “What, the sneakers? Yeah, Keith sent them after your others got lost.” 

_ “Keith sent them?”  _ Lance’s heart is fluttering like butterfly wings. “Why? How did he even know what kind of shoes I wanted?” 

Hunk raises an eyebrow. “He texted us in a panic, late last night, asking if there were any shoes you’d been obsessing over lately. Allura sent him the photo and I guess he bought them.” 

Lance stares at his shoes in incomprehension. He thinks he’s just had a grand epiphany. 

“Hunk,” he says, “I think I’m in love with that boy.” 

Hunk pats him on the shoulder. “I know, buddy.” 

The thing is, Lance doesn’t know what to  _ do  _ with that information. Lance’s luck in love has been laughable at best, and any kind of romantic intentions toward  _ Keith  _ are bound to end in disaster. So, Lance does the only thing he can think to do to distract himself. 

He starts researching cryptids. 

Now, he feels kind of stupid at first, until he remembers that Keith  _ literally  _ told him he’s a mind-reader. Nothing is stupider than that. So Lance goes to work looking up all the mythical creatures he can: werewolves, warlocks, Will-o’-the-wisps, wombats. (Well, wombats aren’t actually mythical, but Lance likes looking at pictures of them. Also, Lance has never  _ seen  _ one in real life, so for all he knows, they could be some giant hoax.)

Lance is like, ninety-nine-point-nine percent certain Keith isn’t a mermaid, though. Which is a true  _ tragedy.  _

But finally,  _ finally,  _ after a long night of googling and making notes and plastering sticky notes all over his desk, he thinks he comes to a conclusion. 

He knows what Keith is. 


	4. go wild

_ “Okay,”  _ Lance announces at lunch, and slams down his notebook filled with research. He might be a little hyped up on too much coffee and exhaustion from staying up all night, but what can you do? “I’ve solved the mystery.” 

Everyone turns to look at him with raised eyebrows. Keith blinks tranquil indigo,  _ unearthly  _ eyes at him. “Have you now,” he says, blandly as always. Lance buzzes like an excited bee as he sets about flipping through the pages of his notebook. 

“So I ruled out faerie, because you can outright lie with a totally straight face and nothing happens to you.” 

“I am not a faerie,” Keith confirms. Their friends have settled back to watch them with bemused, intrigued expressions. Pidge is chomping on a carrot stick like it’s popcorn. 

“And I thought maybe you were a dragon—and don’t get me wrong,  _ that  _ would definitely be one of the coolest possibilities—because sometimes you look like you could literally breathe fire when you’re irritated. But like, you’re not greedy enough to be a dragon I don’t think? And you’re pretty social, which I read in one fandom Wikipedia article that dragons aren’t social. So I put that one in the  _ maybe  _ category.” 

“What,” Keith says. “Who said I was social?” 

Lance raises an eyebrow at him, then pointedly flicks a gaze at every person at their table. “A lot of people don’t have four whole solid friends, Keith. And you have a brother.  _ And  _ that hostess thought you were hot the other night.” 

“That has  _ nothing to do with—”  _

“MOVING ON,” Lance barrels over him, raising a hand to shush him. Taking a deep breath, he uncaps his water bottle. And promptly splashes it in Keith’s face. 

He starts sputtering instantly. “What the hell, Lance?” He glares balefully, but to Lance’s immense disappointment, he does not begin to morph into a mermaid, H20 style. “Not a mermaid,” he says sadly, “Or a witch, for that matter.” 

Keith continues glaring, hair dripping. “Will you just get to the point, already.” 

Lance takes a deep breath. “Okay. So I narrowed it down to the most basic options: werewolf and vampire. You’re definitely feral enough to be a werewolf, but last night was a full moon and unless you have immense self-control or  _ Teen Wolf  _ was a lie, that’s not it.” 

Everyone is silent. Pulse thrumming to remind him of how nervous he’s pretending not to be (he doesn’t want to be wrong and look like an idiot), Lance continues. “So that first day you met me, I could tell you didn’t like me. Like, the first thing you said when you strolled up to the table was  _ ‘do you smell that’  _ like you smelled something super terrible. And then in Physics there was that whole thing about me smelling so bad that you told your brother you were sick and went home early. I’m still offended, by the way, but I got to thinking about like, what if I  _ did  _ smell terrible? Like, my blood is repulsive or something. And you could smell it.” 

Keith has gone eerily still. Lance takes it as a positive and persists, “Then I started thinking about how  _ weird  _ it was, that day when I almost got hit by that car. When I fell, there was  _ nobody  _ around me. And then all of a sudden  _ you _ were. And there were dents in the car, like a  _ handprint.  _ Like you’d put it there when you ran over and  _ stopped the car.”  _

Lance is honestly proud of himself for compiling all of these facts. It would have been easy to dismiss the accident things, blame them on his concussion or delirium, but when he adds them all up . . . “Saturday night was the same. You got to me  _ inhumanly  _ quickly. And I noticed that you never eat or drink  _ anything,  _ even right now.” Everyone glances at the empty table space in front of Keith, like they all need to be reminded, even though Lance suspects the others are in on it. He actually suspects that  _ Allura’s  _ a vampire, too.  _ No  _ human is  _ that  _ flawless. 

“You’re really cold all the time,” Lance ticks off on his fingers, “which could be easily ruled out by this horrid Washington winter, but I suspect something else. I don’t know how you go out in sunlight without getting burned, but it would explain why you look like you’ve never been hit with a single UV ray ever. Maybe that part really is a myth, or maybe you live in this part of the country because the sun only comes out like, once every other decade. I guess that makes sense, because then you can live a mostly normal life and not risk dying all the time. I mean, it makes sense  _ if  _ you’re an undead, mind-reading, dorky  _ vampire.”  _

Everyone is unnervingly silent. It’s jarring, with the buzz of the lunchroom still happening all around them. And then Pidge says: “Holy  _ shit.”  _

Keith is opening and closing his mouth like he’s trying to find the right defense but nothing feels right. Finally, he bursts, “I am not  _ dorky!”  _

_ He didn’t deny it.  _ Lance smiles the smile of a champion, gleeful and winning. “Are too.” 

_ “Are no—”  _ Keith begins, only to cut himself off with a huff. “Whatever.  _ How  _ are you this insufferable  _ all the time?” _

“It’s a gift,” Lance says. “So, do I get my gold star now?” 

The others look at each other, having some sort of silent conversation that Lance really wishes he was in on. Maybe, he hopes, one day he will be. Finally, Hunk nods. 

“I’ll make you a batch of celebratory cupcakes. Also, Allura’s also a vampire, Pidge is going to be a vampire, and I’m a werewolf.” 

Lance slams his hands on the table, because he’s dramatic and excited and he  _ deserves this.  _ “HA! I  _ knew it!”  _

  
  


_____

  
  


A slightly-shamefaced Nyma and lazily grinning Rolo approach him as they’re leaving lunch. 

“Hey . . .” the blonde girl says, biting her lip and glancing nervously at Keith, who’s standing at Lance’s side like a protective and somewhat vindictive guard dog. “So, I’m really sorry about ditching you Saturday. Rolo and I kind of got arrested for stealing a car.” 

Lance blinks and thinks that he should be baffled by this. But he’s more baffled that he  _ isn’t  _ baffled. “Um. Okay. It’s all good. Keith came and picked me up, so . . .” 

“Of course,” Nyma smiles. There are no hard feelings between either of them. Lance thinks they still have a shot at the friendship thing, probably, even though his heart is now pretty much one hundred percent occupied by mullet-y, vampire-y  _ Keith.  _ “Well, I’m glad things worked out. Call me if you ever want to take a spontaneous trip again.” 

“Sure,” Lance says with an answering smile. Then Keith drags him away. 

“Are you an  _ idiot,”  _ Keith hisses, and now that Lance has context, he can say he hisses like a vampire. It’s still pretty catlike, though. Cats and vampires kind of have a lot in common when you think about it. Lance frowns to himself as he tries to to make a list of similarities and gets stuck after  _ hissy, twitchy,  _ and  _ fangs.  _ Maybe they actually don’t have a lot in common after all. “You can’t  _ seriously  _ think of hanging out with them again. They left you to get  _ murdered.”  _

“You saved me before I could get murdered,” Lance points out, nonchalant. Truth is, he’s been doing his best not to think about it. And when his mother asked him how his night had gone, he had  _ definitely  _ left out that part. There’s no need to freak her out over another near-death experience so soon after the last one. 

“Hey, wait. Where are we going? Are you taking me into the woods to  _ murder me?”  _ Lance demands, when he realizes Keith is leading them to the entrance of the school instead of the Physics classroom. 

_ “Why  _ would I murder you, I literally  _ saved  _ you from being murdered two days ago,” Keith grumbles. “Anyway, no. The Biology class next to Shiro’s is doing blood testing today, so Allura, Shiro and I are skipping. There’s going to be some lame substitute in class today. Didn’t you get the school email?” 

“There are people who actually read the school email?” Lance blinks. Then he gets stuck on something else.  _ “Hold up. Shiro—?”  _

Keith glances at him, amused exasperation dancing in his eyes. “Yeah, Lance. Shiro too.” 

“Wow.” Lance shakes his head in disbelief. “Can’t believe I ever thought this place was boring. Also, you still haven’t explained why you’re leading me towards the spooky woods.” 

“I want to show you something,” Keith says cryptically. That’s all Lance is able to get out of him, no matter how much he pesters and whines and wheedles as they walk. 

As soon as they’re covered by the trees, Keith glances behind him to make sure no one’s within sight, and then he sighs. “Get on my back.” 

Lance blinks. “Uh, what.” 

“Just do it,” Keith says impatiently, and Lance has  _ so  _ many questions, but minimal complaints. So he complies, feeling weirdly like a seven-year-old as his legs dangle and Keith grips his thighs to support him. “Do you like rollercoasters?” his dark-haired vampire friend asks when he’s settled, and Lance is a little dizzied by the non sequitur, but answers without hesitation nonetheless. “I love them.” 

“Good,” Keith says, “Hold on tight.” 

And then—Keith  _ takes off.  _

It’s a bit like riding his motorcycle, except Lance was shaken up and tired enough when riding Keith’s motorcycle that he wasn’t able to fully appreciate the adrenaline rush. This is so much different though, because it’s  _ Keith,  _ and he zooms faster than a motorcycle or a cheetah or probably even a dragon, and Lance laughs exuberantly in Keith’s ear as the trees and the wind rush past them. He wonders how fast Keith is in comparison to the speed of light. He wonders if there’re any vampires who have calculated that. Shiro has, probably. Or maybe even Keith, the  _ nerd.  _

Finally, they come to a stop near the top of the mountain. Lance hops down, exhilarated and so dizzy that he almost falls down, but Keith reaches to steady him. “Woah,” he laughs breathlessly, grinning up at Keith, who’s smiling back at him. Smiling like this, all windblown and free, Lance thinks he’s the most natural and beautiful he’s ever seen him. 

“So, what’d you want to show me?” 

“Right.” Keith blinks hastily, like he’s snapping out of a trance, and turns away. He starts walking towards this single beam of light in the center of the clearing, like some kind of spotlight—like the set of a movie. Nothing ever just  _ looks  _ like this in real life. Lance is beginning to wonder if he’s in a dream. 

Then Keith shrugs off his jacket  _ and  _ his shirt, and through his sudden lightheadness Lance thinks:  _ yep, definitely dreaming. If I don’t wake up within the next two seconds I’m going to pass out.  _

Things just get  _ weirder  _ when he steps into the light and his skin starts . . . glittering. 

_ Ooh, shiny,  _ Lance’s brain automatically goes. He’s stepping forward before he can help himself, pressing fingertips to Keith’s sparkling skin. “Alright, this isn’t fair,” he complains, “So not only are you naturally mega-hot, but you don’t even have to pay seventy dollars at  _ minimum  _ for a good highlighter in Sephora?” 

Keith rolls his eyes. “Of course  _ that’s  _ what you focus on. Not how completely  _ stupid  _ this ability is. You know, I never understood this trait before, but I’m beginning to suspect it was specifically evolved to appeal to people like  _ you.”  _

Lance bristles slightly, because that sounds like the beginning of an insult. “Stupid people, you mean?” 

“No.” Keith shakes his head fondly.  _ Fondly.  _ “People who . . . appreciate pretty things.” 

Lance raises an eyebrow. “Getting pretty full of yourself, there.” But he’s still admiring the way Keith’s skin dazzles, and he’s stroking his collarbone with his thumb like he’s some kind of  _ cat.  _ He’s still on the cat thing. 

“It’s dangerous, Lance,” Keith’s tone takes a sudden, serious shift. He lowers his eyes to the ground. “I . . .  _ I’m  _ dangerous. And I have a confession.” 

Lance hums, obviously not in any way concerned. His brain is still a little bit stuck on  _ ooh, pretty glitter.  _ “What’s that?” he says anyway, because he’s a good friend who at least pretends to care about his vampire friend’s fears. 

“When I first met you,” he says, voice lowered, rough like sandpaper scraping his throat. “I didn’t leave class because you smelled bad. It was because you . . . you smelled  _ good. Too _ good.” 

Lance hums again, sympathetically. “Go on.” 

Keith eyes Lance, like he can tell he isn’t taking this very seriously, but after a moment of Lance’s innocent staring, he sighs and relents. “Look, I guess you could say Shiro and I—we have this family. Allura and her uncle are part of it, and Pidge’s parents and brother. And Pidge, when she turns twenty-one, because that’s what she wants. Anyway, we don’t . . . _eat_ people. Like, drink their blood. We feed on animals, and most of the time that’s fine. We know how to control ourselves, and we _can,_ but sometimes—sometimes we come across someone rare. Someone who’s harder to resist. And that’s—for _me,_ at least—you. You’re like . . . I don’t _know._ You’re _infuriatingly_ sweet, like some kind of candy or drug or something. Are drugs sweet? I never got to try them before I died.” Keith frowns, shakes his head, and Lance takes a moment to distance himself from the conversation as the sickening phrase _before I died_ rolls over him. He’d never even thought about that part of becoming a vampire—or, more specifically, how that aspect relates to _Keith_ personally. 

“Anyway, what I’m saying is, I could  _ hurt  _ you. And you should probably stay away from me. But also . . .” Keith hesitates. “I don’t  _ want  _ you to do that.” 

“Well, lucky you, I’m definitely not going to do that,” Lance says, grinning suddenly as he loops his arms loosely around Keith’s neck. “See, you say: ‘ _ Lance, you’re like a drug to me,’  _ and all I hear is that you think I’m an absolute _ snack.  _ I’m seriously flattered. I had no idea you were  _ that  _ into me.” 

_ “Lance,”  _ Keith pleads, and Lance sobers up when he realizes his friend is legitimately upset over this. “I’m serious.  _ This  _ is serious. You need to know what you’re getting into. It’s okay if you’re scared. Or if you don’t want to be around me anymore. I understand.” 

“But I’m not scared,” Lance says. At Keith’s dubious look, he presses.  _ “Seriously.  _ Look, I know scary things, and you’re not it. You saved my life the other day, and  _ then  _ you bought me a pair of shoes to replace the ones I lost, even though you didn’t  _ have  _ to. And there’s also that other time you saved my life in the parking lot. And you let me throw up on  _ your  _ shoes and . . . shit, I  _ bled  _ all over you. How much did that mess with you?” Lance remembers suddenly, horrified. “I am  _ so sorry.  _ That must have been  _ horrible.”  _

Keith stares at him for a long moment with inscrutable midnight eyes. “I tell you I’m a mythological, glittering _monster_ creature who drinks blood, and _you_ feel guilty for putting _me_ at risk?” 

Lance’s lips twitch. It’s kind of funny, when you think about it. But, “Yeah, pretty much,” he admits. He’s not ashamed of it, and he’s not taking it back. 

And Keith throws his head back and laughs, and laughs, and  _ laughs.  _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "a lot of people don't have four solid friends, keith." lance is really here calling me out isn't he. 
> 
> so like, i was rereading the book for the first time in five years to get a better idea for what needed to be corrected—ahem, i mean, for what parts of the story i could use my own creative license with. and i legitimately don't understand why twelve-year-old me liked it so much?? like, not even taking the stupidity and sexism and other blatant issues into account...it's just so bOring, on top of such poor writing?? why did we need a day-to-day of all bella's actions. why did she use so many terrible verbs. why. 
> 
> so many terrible verbs. it pained me to read. i guess the most important question of all is why did i do this to myself. 
> 
> (no offense to anyone who does actually enjoy twilight, of course. i mean, obviously i must enjoy it a little, since i made an entire au of it. i just think it's funny, looking back, how much younger me overlooked. but it's been really fun to take it apart and put my own spin on it, and i hope that regardless of your feelings towards twilight, you're enjoying my interpretation of it.) 
> 
> thanks for reading! <3


	5. i just wanna

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay so...really sorry, i know i promised crack but i think i got something in the crackfic recipe wrong because everythings turned into fluff. i do not know why this phenomenon occurred, maybe i'm even worse of a chef than i thought, but i guess if you're really disappointed...i'm sorry? it's definitely crack in spirit, but now i love my twilight boys so...i think the fluff might be here to stay. please enjoy it anyway lol
> 
> also: i've kind of gotten into the habit of posting this weekly (you guys won't believe the rush i get from updating and seeing comments like—you guys are so amazing) but i probably wont be posting the next chapter next week because i'm moving and it's going to be. wiLd. i think i'll be without internet for a few days. or maybe everything will get set up super fast and i'll end up posting on schedule, who knows?

Lance wakes up one morning with a sledgehammer pounding away at his frontal lobe and a nose stuffed with cotton. And also this sea of swirling nausea, begging to be let out of his stomach. 

This is how his mamá finds him: hunched over the toilet and so dizzy that he nearly slips and hits his head on the bathtub multiple times, shivering and shaking and  _ miserable.  _ “Oh, my poor baby,” she croons softly, carding her fingers through his sweat-damp hair. “Do you think you’ll be all right here by yourself?” she asks worriedly, and that’s when he remembers,  _ shit.  _ His mamá has to go to work. He’s going to be here  _ all alone.  _

He’s never been home alone sick before, in all his seventeen years. The thought of it now makes him want to cry. But he braves a smile and a nod and woozily tells his mother: “I’ll be fibe,” through his stuffy nose, and she nods and kisses the top of his head and tucks him onto the couch with a dozen blankets, the remote, and a glass of water. “I’ll get home early and make soup as soon as I can,” she promises on the way out.  _ “Te quiero.”  _

_ “Te quiero,”  _ Lance mumbles to the closed door. Then he realizes how  _ alone  _ he is, and his eyes begin to water. To distract himself, he turns on the TV and flips through the cartoons for a while before giving up and settling on something as background noise. He’s already stopped paying attention by the time he fumbles his phone off the coffee table and sends a series of texts to the group chat. 

**(7:13 AM)** _ im sick :(  _

**(7:14 AM)** _ i hate stupid forks _

**(7:14 AM)** _ never got sick in florida  _

Almost immediately, he gets a reply from Hunk. Steady, reliable Hunk. 

**Sunshine Bear:**

**(7:15 AM)** _ aw no :(( what’s wrong?  _

Lance fumbles his phone as he types out his reply, which is the reason for the typo. 

**(7:16 AM)** _ fluuuyef _

Suddenly exhausted again, Lance lowers his phone to his chest with the intention to pick it back up and check for messages in a few moments. But he passes out long before his screen goes dark and it starts vibrating as more messages come in. 

He wakes up some time later to someone saying his name. “Lance. Hey,  _ Lance.”  _

Grumbling, he forces his eyes open. The action kind of feels like lifting a thousand weights with his eyelid muscles. He squints as the world slowly, blearily comes into focus, and he honestly isn’t even all that surprised by what he sees sitting on his coffee table, right by his head. 

“How did you get in.” He can’t even be bothered to vocalize it as a question. It’s just. There. He closes his eyes again as Keith replies, “Well I knocked for a while, but you never answered, so I picked the lock.” 

Lance would smile, but his face is too sore.  _ Everything  _ is too sore. He feels like he was just run over by a wild herd of animals. Or maybe a spaceship. A herd of spaceships shaped like wild animals. “That’s pretty creepy, yanno,” he mumbles. 

“Shut up, I was worried you were dead, which is a  _ logical  _ thing to worry when it comes to you,” Keith snaps. A couple weeks ago Lance probably would have thought he’s being an asshole right now, but now he knows him enough to recognize it as the affectionate concern that it is. He fumbles a hand out of his blanket burrito to pat Keith’s shoulder sympathetically. Except he can’t reach his shoulder, so it ends up being his elbow. 

“Jus’sa flu,” he says, “Not death. I don’t think.” He frowns, squinting his eyes open at Keith again. “‘m  _ not  _ going to die . . . right?” 

“I don’t know,” Keith says fretfully, and sometimes Lance hates that his friend is so unhelpfully blunt. “I haven’t been sick since before I died. I don’t even  _ remember  _ what having the flu can do to you.” 

_ How did you die?  _ Lance manages to have a lucid thought through his sickness-induced delirium, but he has enough control left over his tongue to not let the question slip. Instead, he lets his hand slip down Keith’s elbow to his hand, slides their palms together even though his is probably super clammy and Keith’s is cold as ice. 

“Well, at least you’re here now,” he says. He would be embarrassed by how relieved he actually sounds if he wasn’t so exhausted. “Now be a good vampire boyfriend and hold my feet while we watch crappy movies until I have to throw up again.” 

Keith’s brows furrow like he has many questions he wants to ask, but he doesn’t ask any of them as he does what he’s told. He carefully settles down at the other end of the couch and props Lance’s fuzzy-sock-clad feet in his lap. Lance hums at the quiet contentment that comes with being able to feel that another person is nearby—even if that person is colder than a snowman and only breathes due to the necessity to “fit in.” He wonders why Keith feels the need to keep up the ruse when he’s around people who know he’s a vampire. Maybe it’s just a habit. Or maybe vampires do actually need to breath oxygen and Lance has just never stumbled across that piece of lore before. 

“Hey Keith,” he asks, because he’s tired and sick and loses pretty much his entire filter when he’s  _ one  _ of those things, let alone both at once. “Do you need to breathe?” 

Keith, at least, seems to be in the mood to humor him. “Nah. I just do it because of peer pressure.” 

“Peer pressure?” 

“My brother’s like:  _ ‘we need to be in the habit of doing it all the time so we don’t accidentally stop breathing around a human.’  _ And the others agree, so that’s what we do. I guess I just forget I’m doing it now.” 

“Huh.” Lance thinks for a moment. “Well, if the sunlight thing isn’t true, what else isn’t? Like, can you really turn into a bat?” 

“No. Unfortunately.” Keith sounds like this does genuinely upset him. Lance pouts. 

“Dang it. Okay, what about sleeping in coffins?” 

“Myth. I don’t sleep at all.” 

Lance pauses. “That is . . .  _ so  _ sad.” He can’t comprehend a world without sleep. Sleep is one of life’s few natural gifts. “Okay. Garlic.” 

“Also a myth, I think. I kind of have a slight garlic allergy, but I don’t think it’s related because Shiro claims to love the stuff. Puts it in  _ everything.  _ I still haven’t figured out if he does it as a joke, though.” 

“No reflection in mirrors.  _ Tell  _ me that one’s real, because otherwise there’s no excuse for your abominable hair.” 

There’s a frown in Keith’s voice when he asks, “What’s wrong with my hair?” 

Lance makes this tiny, distressed noise that could be due to being sick but more likely is due to Keith being Keith.  _ “Dude.  _ You have a  _ mullet.  _ What era do you come from, the eighties?” 

It’s Keith’s unexpectedly long silence that clues Lance in that he screwed up. His eyes fly open as he forces himself onto his elbows, looking to the end of the couch at the hunched figure of his friend. “Shit. You’re from the eighties, aren’t you?” he realizes. 

Keith just kind of shrugs, which isn’t really an answer. But then he says, in forcibly nonchalant voice, “Yeah.” 

Lance feels kind of terrible now, and it’s not all because of his head and stomach and person in general. “Oh. Sorry, man. You know . . .” He hesitates. “You know, you can talk about it, if you want.” 

Keith looks at him for a drawn-out, inscrutable moment, and then he does the most unexpected thing—he smiles. It’s soft and genuine and not tinged by humor or sarcasm. It’s just . . . nice. “Thanks, Lance,” he says. “But maybe not while you’re sick. You’re pathetic enough for both of us right now without my sob vampire conversion story.” 

“Hey,  _ rude,”  _ Lance complains, and follows it up with a series of painful, rib-wracking coughs. Keith squeezes Lance’s foot, simultaneously in sympathy but also with the obvious unspoken remark:  _ you just proved my point.  _

“Whatever.” Lance would roll his eyes if they didn’t already feel so pressurized they’re about to fall out of his skull. “Stop being a jerk and put on a movie. I hear  _ Dracula’s  _ pretty thrilling.” 

_ (Dracula  _ is, in fact, the most boring thing Lance has ever watched, ever. But halfway through he manages to wrangle himself into an upright sitting position, and Keith lets him rest his head on his shoulder and complain through his sniffles about how  _ “They didn’t even  _ show  _ his murder onscreen, Keith! The cowards! How are we supposed to even believe he’s dead? Wait . . . is that insensitive? Is Dracula like your family member? Are all vampires related through your weird vampy blood?”  _ Keith rolls his eyes but he tolerates Lance’s dumb rambling until the sick boy finally winds down with,  _ “Whatever, just put on  _ Hotel Transylvania.”) 

(Lance falls asleep about twenty minutes in. This is how his mother comes home to meet Keith for the first time: arm carefully braced around Lance to hold him up against his shoulder, her son drooling and dead to the world. He sleeps through the entire interaction as his mother invites Keith to stay over for soup, and though he declines with the excuse that he has to get home, she later tells Lance that his new boyfriend is charming and very sweet and she likes him very much.)

(Lance doesn’t tell her that Keith isn’t his boyfriend, not actually. At least, they haven’t had The Conversation, and he doesn’t know if Keith is actually serious about him at all. Instead, he smiles and tells her, painfully honest, “I really like him too.”) 

  
  


_____

  
  


Keith Kogane is  _ stupid _ pretty, and it’s so  _ unfair.  _ Lance might actually die a little inside every time he does that suave-flicking-bangs-out-of-his-eyes thing. 

And then he has the  _ gall  _ to look up whenever Lance enters Shiro’s classroom and  _ smile  _ at him, like some kind of—some kind of  _ stupid pretty person who’s happy to see him.  _ It’s ridiculous, and Lance is not  _ equipped  _ for this. How is he supposed to react when Keith tells him: “Hey,” without stumbling over his words and emulating a stoplight on red? There’s only one answer: he can’t. 

“How dare you,” Lance grumbles at him, because he’s petty and annoyed and if Keith is going to be the source of his teen angst and despair, then the least he can do is be the victim of Lance’s antagonism in return. 

“Okay,” Keith says, tone somewhere between easygoing and perplexed. Then, like Lance isn’t being weird, “So I was wondering if you wanted to study together after school.” 

Lance moodily flicks open his notebook and slams his pencil onto the paper. Then he adjusts it so the angle is more aesthetically pleasing. “I would  _ love  _ to,” he says, and the most irritating thing is that he really sounds like he means it. He ignores the fact that it’s because he  _ does.  _

So he texts his mother to tell her she doesn’t have to pick him up after school, and when the bell rings to signal the end of another grueling, gray day, Lance packs up his stuff and follows Keith out to his motorcycle. His heart does this excited little tap dance at the sight of it, as he realizes that this time, he’ll definitely be alert enough to enjoy riding on a  _ motorcycle.  _ He thinks that his mamá would  _ kill  _ him if she knew he was making a habit of accepting rides home from dangerous boys on motorcycles. 

Well, one dangerous boy. And it’s been established that Keith isn’t actually all that dangerous, so his mother’s issue wouldn’t be with the  _ boy,  _ in this case. It would definitely be the death-mobile. 

Keith glances over his shoulder, quirks an eyebrow and says, “You coming?” The wind sweeps his hair into his eyes and he looks so infuriatingly attractive that it takes Lance a minute to blink himself out of his daze and clear his throat. 

“Uh—yeah, yep,” Lance fumbles before deciding that shutting up is probably the wisest choice of action right now. Keith bites his lip like he’s holding back laughter as he hands over a bike helmet, and Lance absolutely  _ does not  _ appreciate his amusement as he takes the protective headgear and climbs onto the seat behind his stupid vampire friend. He freezes for a moment while he awkwardly tries to remember where he’s supposed to put his hands. 

“Around me,” Keith says, almost like he can read Lance’s thoughts after all. Lance scowls and almost doesn’t just to spite him, but then Keith adds, “Unless you want to fall off and land in a snowdrift.” 

_ No snow.  _ Lance winds his arms around Keith so quickly that it’s kind of embarrassing. Keith’s snicker is graciously drowned out by the sound of the engine revving before Lance can be tempted to smack him in his dumb, proportionate face. 

And then they’re flying down the road, and yeah, maybe it’s not  _ quite  _ the same level of adrenaline as getting a piggy-back ride from a vampire, but it’s a rush all the same. Lance is uncaring of the way he tightens his grip around Keith as he throws his head back, gleeful laughter spilling out behind them as they zip around a corner definitely too fast. He’s pretty sure Keith is going at least twenty miles over the speed limit. He doesn’t mind this until it’s too soon that Keith is turning onto his street. 

And then Lance remembers his mother. “Hey,” he says into Keith’s ear, hoping he can hear him as he slows down, “Can you park a little ways away from my house? My mom will kill me if she sees your murder bike when she gets home.” 

Keith obediently does as requested, though he’s smirking as he looks at Lance over his shoulder. “You hang out with a vampire on the regular, and my  _ motorcycle  _ is the thing you’re scared of her finding out about?” 

“My mamá wouldn’t care about you being a vampire. She’s very open-minded,” Lance says confidently, “but  _ motos de la muerte _ are where she draws the line.” 

“I hope you won’t take offense to me questioning your mother’s priorities,” Keith dryly replies, and Lance just laughs as he grabs onto his wrist and tugs him towards his driveway. 

It’s half an hour later, surrounded by cracked-open textbooks and pages of headache-inducing notes, that Lance is bored out of his mind enough to wonder for the first time, “Hey, what are you doing in high school anyway?” 

Keith looks up from where he’s stoically highlighting an evidently important piece of text. “What?” 

“Yanno.” Lance shrugs, waves a hand at Keith’s general person. “You’re all . . . vampire-y. Immortal life and all that—unless that’s a myth?” 

Keith shakes his head. “Not a myth,” he confirms. “But what does that have to do with me going to school?” 

“I’m  _ getting  _ to that.” Lance rolls his eyes in exasperation. “So if you’re immortal, don’t you have better things to do with your life than suffer through the drudgery of the American public education system? You could be like, traveling. Or I don’t know, pursuing  _ higher,  _ more interesting education. I get that the never-aging thing might be a problem at some point, but you could just tell people that you have really good genetics. Or that you use Olay Age-Defying cream.” 

Keith taps the eraser-end of his pencil against the paper as he mulls that over. He seems strangely hesitant, starting and stopping half a dozen sentences before finally settling on, “You have to have completed high school to pursue higher education, though.” 

Lance blinks. “You . . . never finished high school?” 

Keith shrugs. “I never . . . got to graduate, back when I was alive,” he explains slowly, like he’s carefully selecting his words. “And then after Shiro Turned me, I spent a lot of time just getting used to being a vampire. I took off a couple decades ago to ‘find myself’ or some shit—I don’t even know, honestly. Whatever I was looking for, I didn’t find it. I wound up trying to locate Shiro instead, and when I found him here . . .” He shrugs again. “He thought I should go to school, close out that chapter of the life I never got to finish. Since Allura was doing that anyway, I figured:  _ why not?  _ And who knows—maybe I’ll go on to do something else after this. Or maybe not. Either way, it hasn’t been so bad here. It’s actually kind of . . . the first time in my life I’ve ever felt at  _ home.”  _

Lance thinks that sounds . . . really sad, honestly. He doesn’t know all that much about Keith’s background, but he thinks that if he’s spent _decades_ alone, always looking for something, never finding it, never feeling like you have a place to land when the hard day is over—that must have been _so_ terrible. Lance can’t even really process the concept of living on his own as an adult someday, let alone roaming lost for years, forever frozen at seventeen. 

“Well, I’m . . . glad you’re here now,” Lance says, and feels lame as soon as the words leave his mouth. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say. Evidently it’s good enough, because Keith smiles, this small but genuine, breathtaking thing. “Yeah, me too. I mean, we wouldn’t have met each other otherwise.” 

Lance returns the smile, but it’s suspiciously wobbly, and he hopes Keith can’t see it but knows he definitely can. He has super enhanced vampire vision. “About that . . .” 

Keith tilts his head inquisitively. A little line forms between his brows when he scrunches them. “Yeah?” 

“Well—” Lance is already fumbling with his words, how embarrassing. “I mean, just—I was wondering. You’re glad we met, right?” 

“Of course I am.” Keith blinks, like that was the last question he was expecting. “Why would you think otherwise?” 

“I don’t. I  _ don’t,”  _ Lance hurries to clarify. “I mean, I was pretty sure. Like, a solid ninety-seven percent sure. But I wanted to make sure, because there was that measly three percent chance you didn’t, and if you said  _ no  _ then that would’ve made my next question a lot more awkward.” 

“And what question is that?” Keith’s eyes are beginning to sparkle, like he understands where this is going now. It’s incredibly annoying, but not as annoying as the way it momentarily dazzles him into wordlessness. 

“I know it’s super cliche,” he finally says. He fidgets with his pencil, taps it against the notebook page. “But . . . what are we, Keith? Like, I know I  _ call  _ you my vampire boyfriend, but are you actually? Do you want to be? Or is this a just-friends-who-occasionally-flirt kind of thing?” 

“Well . . .” Keith mulls the word over long enough for Lance to become antsy. Meaning like, zero point two seconds. “What do you want us to be?” 

“I want to date you. Duh. You’re hot and I haven’t been subtle about thinking that,” Lance says bluntly. Keith smirks, but it’s short-lived, quickly replaced by this deeply contemplative expression. He flicks his gaze down to Lance’s hand, still drumming his pencil, and a nanosecond later it’s covered by his own. 

Lance stills. Keith’s hand is as cold and smooth as a stone. And  _ soft,  _ and isn’t that unfair, because he’s probably never moisturized once in his collective living and undead life. “I feel the same,” Keith says, and Lance’s heart does this skipping thing, like the needle of a record going haywire. “But . . . there’s kind of a major problem here, isn’t there?” 

Lance’s heart returns to it’s regularly scheduled programming as he frowns. “What major problem?” 

Keith raises an eyebrow. “Our relationship would be like a baby penguin dating a killer whale, Lance.” 

Lance thinks about that, then says with a grin, “You’re the baby penguin, right?” 

His friend laughs abruptly, like he was startled into it. But his indigo eyes are almost painfully serious as he looks at him. “I could hurt you,” he whispers. 

“You could hurt me anyway,” Lance points out. “Look at us—we’re hanging out right now on my bed with like, two centimeters separating us. You’re around me  _ all the time  _ like this. I think if you were going to eat me, you would’ve tried something already.” 

Keith bites his lip. “Sometimes it’s . . . really hard to be around you. I wish it wasn’t, but it’s—I can’t change that.” 

“I’m not  _ asking  _ you to change that.” Lance rolls his eyes. But he knows this is another one of those serious conversations, so he straightens up with a sigh, squeezes Keith’s hand and hopes the gesture is comforting. “See Keith, there’s this awesome human invention called  _ communication.  _ It works like this: things get to be too much for you, you say  _ ‘hey, Lance, I hate to cut our date short but you’re sort of looking more like a Twinkie than an unbearably attractive human boy right now, so I’m gonna go into the woods and devour a whole antelope.’  _ And then I say,  _ ‘sounds good, babe, and do you think you could pick up a pizza on the way back? I’m getting kind of peckish myself.’  _ Doesn’t that sound easy?” 

Keith snorts. “Easy because you’re drastically over-simplifying things. But it’s . . . it  _ isn’t.  _ And I don’t understand how you can be so— _ chill  _ about the fact that there are times when I want to  _ murder  _ you.” 

“Isn’t murder the quality in a romantic partner that all the kids are looking for these days?” But Lance’s smile flickers, a tiny giveaway that he  _ knows  _ what they’re talking about isn’t actually a joke. Still, he  _ knows  _ Keith, and he trusts him, and he needs him to  _ know that.  _

“Kiss me,” he orders. He flits his gaze up to Keith’s stare, hopes that his own eyes are burning with intensity to mirror his bewilderment. “Kiss me, and if you can do that, it’ll prove to us both that you can be a perfectly behaved boyfriend.” 

“Lance . . .” Keith is shaking his head, disagreement curving down the corners of his mouth. “That’s a really . . .  _ really  _ bad idea.” 

But Lance is set on the idea now; he’s  _ determined,  _ and no one can get in his way when he’s made up his mind. He shoves all of their school stuff out of the way, pries Keith’s open textbook out of his lap, and maneuvers himself until he’s settled there instead. He rests one hand at the back of Keith’s neck, curves the other one around the plane of his cheek, and repeats: “Kiss me.” Keith is completely motionless, both hands gripping the comforter beneath them, and he looks so conflicted that it’s almost painful to look at. But he’s  _ conflicted,  _ and that’s a good thing, that’s what Lance wants, so he leans in just  _ that  _ little bit further into his space, stops just shy of his lips, lashes fluttering. “Please?” he breathes. 

That’s all it takes for Keith to break. Flying into his space so quickly it can  _ only  _ be described as nonhuman, hands coming up to clutch almost desperately at Lance’s hips as he reels him in that last millimeter’s distance, he kisses him: hard and furious and fast—there and gone like lightning, but a million times more electric. He hovers in Lance’s orbit even when they disconnect; Lance is breathing too quickly, and Keith isn’t breathing at all. He tucks a stand of unruly, inky hair back behind Keith’s ear, tilts his head, and kisses him again. 

This time is longer. It’s enough time for Keith to loosen up: relaxing his hands against the small of Lance’s back where his shirt has rucked up; mouth not quite so violent as he gives in to Lance’s insistent softness, trying his own hand at something gentle, something addictively sweet. And Lance’s heart is pounding as he’s flooded with intoxicating doses of adrenaline and dopamine, and all he can think through the haze is that  _ this  _ is nothing to be afraid of, but then he makes the mistake of letting out this soft, breathy sigh right into Keith’s mouth and—

“Wait. Stop, Lance— _ stop,”  _ Keith gasps, and then suddenly he’s plastered himself against Lance’s headboard to get away from him, and he’s still sitting in the middle of the bed, blinking glittering galaxies out of his eyes. Keith’s gone even more chalky pale than usual, pupils blown so wide that his eyes are figurative black holes, and Lance isn’t sure, but he thinks Keith is leaving indents with his nails in the wood. 

“I . . . I’m sorry,” Lance says, immediately chagrined. “I went too far—I’m sorry. Are you okay?” 

“Um.” Keith closes his eyes, chest visibly rising and falling as he breathes, and Lance finds himself thinking again about how strange that is—the breathing thing. How Keith doesn’t  _ need  _ to breathe, but still falls into the habit in high-stress situations. Maybe it’s a sort of self-soothing mechanism. Or maybe it really is just unconscious habit. “Yeah, I’m . . . I’m good. Maybe a little—slower next time? That was a lot at once. A  _ lot.”  _

“Oh.” Guilt twists up like a snake coiling in his chest. He’s both ashamed of putting Keith in this position and of the fact that he doesn’t regret actually  _ kissing _ him at all. “I’m sorry. Do you need to leave?” 

But to his surprise, Keith shakes his head. He takes a few more deep breaths, and when he opens his eyes again, they’ve returned to normal. Deep, pure midnight. “I think I’ll be okay now,” he says, and he nods, as if he becomes more sure of himself when he says it. 

“So, uh,” Lance laughs without any humor in it—it’s kind of regretful and a lot disappointed. “I . . . guess there’s not a huge chance that’s going to happen again, huh?” 

But Keith surprises him again, unspooling himself from the headboard to settle back into his earlier position: legs folded, reaching to balance his textbook between his knees. He looks at Lance with a meditative intensity and says, “Actually . . . now that we’ve gotten the first one out of the way—I think it’s something I could adjust to. Maybe  _ too  _ easily, even. That is, if you’re willing to kiss me again . . .?” 

“More than willing,” Lance blurts immediately. He really  _ is  _ shameless, isn’t he? 

Keith’s grin is a little sharp around the edges, cutting with amusement—he’s back to his regular infuriatingly beautiful self. “Then I think we can work something out,” he says, and while Lance continues to stare at him, wide-eyed, his smile softens, and he leans in to press a single, chaste kiss to Lance’s forehead. It’s a kiss that says they have time to figure things out, later. It’s a kiss that tells him:  _ I’m here now. I’m with you.  _

Oddly, after Keith heads home for the night, that last kiss is the one that stays with him when he lays down to sleep. He closes his eyes and thinks of soft lips on his face, thinks of Keith’s indigo eyes and soft smiles and perfect everything, and though there’s a part of him that thinks it really is stupid of him to fall so hard and fast over a guy he met barely a couple months ago, the bigger part of him is just stupidly happy at the thought that he’s going to get to be with Keith again tomorrow. 


	6. where you been hanging out lately?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "maybe everything will get set up super fast and i'll end up posting on schedule, who knows?" i said optimistically, in last chapter's notes. 
> 
> haha, no. so it turns out, my internet's not going to be up for like three weeks. but we're back home packing up the last of our stuff this weekend, so i can update now! i might go ahead and upload another chapter tomorrow, just because it'll be like vampire centuries before i can upload again after that. but i also might not have time. guess we'll see. 
> 
> anyway, enjoy!

Lance hears the sound of gravel crunching beneath wheels early on Saturday morning and goes to his window to investigate. He isn’t necessarily  _ surprised _ to see Keith parking his motorcycle behind his mother’s car, but he can’t say he was expecting him either. 

“What are you doing here?” he says as he opens the front door. Keith raises an eyebrow, and Lance ignores the way the morning drizzle has dampened his black hair enough for his bangs to stick alluringly to his forehead. In the background, scrolling through movie options, his mother’s disapproval is audible in her voice as she scolds,  _ “Lance,  _ don’t talk to your boyfriend like that. Shouldn’t you be glad that he took time out of his morning to visit you?” 

“Yeah,  _ Lance,”  _ Keith says, eyes widening to convey affected hurt. The  _ faker. _ “Here I was expecting you to go all starry-eyed and kiss me hello like we’re in some teen romantic drama. But I guess I don’t mean that much to you. . . .” 

And joke or not,  _ that  _ Lance doesn’t approve of, so it’s with a scowl that he steps into Keith’s space, tugs him by the collar of his stupid leather jacket, and plants a kiss right on his mouth. “Hello, Keith.  _ Whatever  _ did I do to deserve the pleasure of seeing your beautiful face this early in the morning, Keith?” 

Amusingly, Keith is a little stunned, like he hadn’t actually expected Lance to go along with it. “Uh . . .” he fumbles, and Lance rocks back on his heels and enjoys the moment. “My, uh—family wants to meet you? I mean, you’ve already met Shiro and Allura, but in a . . . non-school setting. Is how they want to meet you. All of them want to meet you together. At our house. If you’re down for that.” 

Lance perks up a little. He’s been curious about Keith’s family life for  _ weeks.  _ “I am  _ so  _ down for that,” he says emphatically. 

Keith’s smile is sudden, like it was startled onto his face. “Oh . . . okay,” he says. “When did you want to go—?” 

“Now,” Lance says, then pauses to reevaluate. He looks down at himself, taking note of his sweatpants and blue lion slippers. “Actually, in like. An hour. I have to look  _ perfect.”  _

Keith furrows his eyebrows, tells him, “You always look perfect,” like he’s pointing out something obvious and he’s a little confused on why Lance didn’t know it himself. It’s so  _ Keith,  _ and it’s so much that it sends Lance’s chest collapsing in a really good way. The best way. But also a disbelieving way, because he doesn’t know  _ when  _ or  _ how  _ this happened. 

Keith is the perfect one, is what he wants to say. _ I could never compare to you.  _ But instead he smiles, feeling all soft and warm even as he kisses Keith’s cold, marble cheek. “An hour,” he repeats. And then he turns and dashes upstairs before Keith can ask him what he’s supposed to do with that time. 

Lance takes a shower, and then he stands in front of his closet and rips approximately all of it out to toss onto his bed in a Mount Everest of discarded, abysmal apparel items.  _ Nothing  _ that he owns is screaming  _ ‘to meet the boyfriend’s family!’  _ at him and it’s both infuriatingly annoying and also the most tragic thing to ever happen in the history of teenagers. He eventually settles on the lightwash jeans that make his legs look longer than a giraffe’s and the blue sweater Veronica had gotten him because it matches his eyes perfectly, but then he heads over to the mirror and has another crisis, because  _ of course  _ it’s a bad hair day. 

In the end, he leaves the hair alone and swipes blue-tinted highlighter across his cheekbones in a show of solidarity. He’s hoping Keith’s family will be like:  _ “Hey, you sparkle? We sparkle too! You’re part of the family now, and you have our blessing to marry Keith.”  _

(Lance has never thought about marrying Keith before now. He meditates on it for a moment and decides that yeah, someday, he could totally see himself married to Keith, even though he’s a vampire. Honestly, it probably wouldn’t be the most surprising thing to ever happen to him.)

Then, with a final staredown with his reflection, and an acquiescing sigh as he runs his runs his fingers through his hopeless hair, Lance nods to himself and turns to go announce his presentability. 

He finds Keith deep in conversation with his mother about the wildlife here in Forks. Evidently, this part of Washington is plagued with more bears than any other part of the state. The vampire boy catches Lance’s eye over his mother’s shoulder, and he grins this secret, humorous grin. Lance’s heart twists a little when he processes that  _ he’s  _ in on the secret. 

His mamá follows Keith’s gaze, though, and her expression dawns with realization. “I should let you two boys go,” she says lightly. “Lance, have fun at Keith’s. Be home before dark, okay? I wouldn’t want you to run into any bears.” 

“Don’t worry, Ms. McClain,” Keith promises, with another flash of a wicked grin directed at Lance. “I’ll keep him safe.” 

Lance bites his lip on a laugh when, mere minutes later, they’re winding up a road at speeds that would give his mamá a heart attack. He feels the wind tousle his hair and thinks that maybe it’s a good thing he didn’t spend that so time on it after all—all that hard work would’ve been ruined within seconds once Keith drove them out of sight of his house. Keith feels steady and reliable beneath Lance’s hands, and he thinks he’ll never get tired of this. This rush of something that should be dangerous but isn’t—because he’s with Keith. 

As is becoming the theme, it seems like it’s too soon that a large house becomes visible at the end of the long, winding driveway, Keith slowing down from his death-defying speeds to a calmer one before coming to a stop completely. There are no other vehicles visible around, but Keith doesn’t comment on it, so Lance figures everyone else just parks their cars in the garage or something. 

It’s only as they’re walking up the front steps that Lance realizes he’s never thought much about where Keith lives, but if he  _ had  _ thought about it, he definitely never would have imagined this. Everything’s all sleek glass and warm wood—the kind of expensive house you’d see on HGTV, unrealistically perfect and far out of any real person’s price range. 

In all honesty, Lance was half-hoping Keith and his family lived in a cave. It would have been very vampire-esque. 

Keith takes one look at his face as he’s unlocking the door and smirks. “You’re thinking about how you thought we lived in a cave, aren’t you?”

“I thought you said you couldn’t read my mind,” Lance retorts as he steps inside. Keith laughs quietly as he shuts the door behind him, the sound like low, tinkling bells. The inside of the house is a lot like the outside: smooth wood floors and glass stairs, unnaturally immaculate for a place where people live. Keith leads him out of the foyer up the switchback staircase, and the delectable smell of something cooking reaches his nose as soon as they hit the landing. He frowns curiously, eyeing Keith, “Was I wrong about the vampires not eating thing?” 

“We  _ can  _ eat. We just usually choose not to. Imagine eating pizza but all the flavors are watered down to almost nothing. Like every bite is the aftertaste of pizza.” Lance makes a horrified face, and Keith laughs again. “Anyway, vampires aren’t the only creatures who frequent this haunt. We have humans to feed, too.” 

“Humans?” Lance inquires. “Like, more than Pidge, humans? Plural?” 

“And the occasional werewolf,” Keith amends. “We keep diverse company.” 

Lance is still trying to process this when Keith takes him by the elbow and gently prods him around the next corner. They cross the threshold into a large kitchen: marble countertops and stainless steel appliances, and at the very center of all the activity—

“Hunk!” Lance says, happily surprised. It draws the attention not only of his friend, but every other person in the room. Lance counts . . . six heads, not including Keith’s and his own. He recognizes two of them to be Mr. Shirogane and Allura, and two others to look similar enough to Pidge to be her relatives. There’s a darkly tanned man with cinnamon-colored hair chopping garlic at the island and a blonde girl chatting with Allura at the table that he doesn’t recognize. 

“Hey, dude,” Hunk says, and waves with his big spoon before he returns to stirring something in a pot. “I hope you like fettuccine.” 

“I  _ love  _ fettuccine,” Lance replies with feeling, tacks on hopefully, “Will there be garlic knots?” 

The tan guy looks up with a flashing white smile. “I like this one already,” he says to Keith. “You should keep him.” 

“Excuse you,” Lance says,  _ “I  _ keep  _ him.  _ He’s my vampire.” Tan guy sets down his knife to shake Lance’s hand and Lance takes it. His hand is warm. He’s either a human or a werewolf then, he infers. 

“I’m Adam. Shiro’s husband,” Tan guy introduces, and Lance perks up. 

“I didn’t know Mr. Shirogane was married.” He quirks an eyebrow, glances from Adam to his Physics teacher, who’s neutrally watching the scene unfold from his seat next to the woman who Lance assumes is Pidge’s mom. She has the same honey-brown hair. “So tell me, was it like  _ West Side Story?  _ He, a vampire. You, a not-vampire. Opposing clans and a fight against the odds until love ultimately reigned supreme?” 

“I don’t think there were vampires in  _ West Side Story,”  _ the blonde girl murmurs to Allura. Adam grins as he goes back to his chopping. “Sorry to disappoint—it’s actually a pretty boring story. He was pretending to be a college student—” 

“I  _ was  _ a college student,” Mr. Shirogane interrupts defensively. “I was in college. Getting a college degree. Ergo, college student.” 

Adam rolls his eyes in the same fond way Keith sometimes does. So that’s who he gets it from. “He was getting his like, billionth degree—teaching, that time. And I was in pre-med. We bonded over the perils of midterms, he brought me copious amounts of coffee, and at the end of the semester we were making plans to move in together.” He shrugs, a glint in his eyes as he looks back at Lance. “It did, of course, take a minute to get over the whole  _ vampire  _ thing, but as you can see, I managed.” 

“Eh, it’s not all that exciting when you really think about it,” Lance shrugs back. “I’m still disappointed Keith isn’t a mermaid. That would be  _ so  _ hot.” 

“I am standing right here,” Keith says. Lance and Adam ignore him. The latter is nodding thoughtfully, turning his knife over in his hand as he says, “Mermaid  _ would _ be so much cooler. Like, dating a vampire is just dating a slightly-more-pointy-than-normal human. But dating a mermaid would be like getting to visit an entire other world every time you see them.” 

_ “Yes!”  _ Lance makes excited agreement noises.  _ “Finally,  _ someone who gets it. Also, hey, you were a pre-med student? My sister’s in pre-med right now and she’s like,  _ dying.”  _

“No kidding? I have a whole self-written survival guide on pre-med, if you think she’d be interested.” 

“She would  _ love that.  _ Seriously, you’d be her favorite person.” 

In the background, Keith slouches over to take the empty seat beside Shiro. “I’m never getting my boyfriend back, am I?” he says gloomily. 

Shiro, also, is looking on the scene with some chagrin. “I don’t know why I thought this would be a good idea. This is going to be a nightmare.” 

  
  


_____

  
  


So aside from Adam, there are some other new faces. The blonde girl’s name is Romelle, and she’s a werewolf. She’s one of Hunk’s best friends, and she tells Lance that her brother would normally be here, but he’s off hunting up north with some friends. “Next time, then,” he says, and she flashes a warm smile and says, “Absolutely.” 

The honey-haired woman is, in fact, Pidge’s mother. The guy who looks like a splitting image of Pidge, just slightly older and male-er, is her brother Matt. Pidge shows up on the scene later with her father and an orange-haired man named Coran—who introduces himself as Allura’s uncle—and announces that they were able to fix the something that they accidentally broke earlier whilst experimenting. Shiro breathes a quiet sigh of relief. Evidently, whatever it was is important to him. 

Lance is still kind of confused on the whole Holt-vampire-family situation, so he asks about it over dinner while he takes apart a garlic knot. “I mean, you don’t have to answer if it’s a sensitive topic, obviously.” 

“Not at all,” Sam Holt says easily. “Colleen, Matt and I were involved in a terrible explosion in a lab a few years back. Shiro is the only reason why we survived.” 

“Technically, we didn’t survive,” Matt points out. He grins at Lance, and Lance does a double-take when he notices the slightly pointed fangs poking into his bottom lip. 

_ “Matt,”  _ Keith hisses at Lance’s side, alarmed. “Put those away.” 

“No, Matt, don’t put those away,” Lance says, fascinated. “Hey Keith, how come you’ve never let me see your fangs before?” 

_ “Because, _ that’s—it’s not—you do not show your  _ human boyfriend  _ your  _ vampire fangs,  _ Lance!” 

Matt’s grin only widens. “Keith is old-fashioned,” he whispers conspiratorially. Lance decides he loves this entire family with his whole heart. 

“Anyway,” Sam says, eyes flickering with amusement as everyone settles back down, “Pidge was only eight when it happened. We obviously weren’t going to  _ abandon  _ her, so we did what we had to do to ensure she would be safe with us. And she’ll join us in a few years.” 

“About that,” Lance says, then proceeds to stuff his face with bread. He holds up a hand like,  _ give me a second,  _ while he chews and swallows. Turning to Pidge, he asks, “Why twenty-one? Is it like, the magic number? Do you have to have an ID to drink blood?” 

“Nah,” Pidge shakes her head, flits her gaze up from the piece of kitchen tech she’s destroying to answer him. “But like,  _ look  _ at me, Lance. I’m fifteen, but I look like I’m five. I’m hoping a few extra years will make it so I won’t have to deal with people mistaking me for a kid for my entire undead life. Can you imagine how annoying that would be?” 

Lance nods thoughtfully. “I hadn’t thought about that . . . yeah, that would suck.” Pidge snorts. 

“And like, the ‘doing what you had to do’ thing? That sounds pretty ominous.” Lance quirks a brow at Pidge’s dad. “What’s that about?” 

“Ah, we sent Pidge to her grandmother’s for the summer,” Colleen speaks up. Her eyes have the same amused brightness behind them as Matt’s and Pidge’s, like there’s always some great joke that only they can understand. “Spent a few months further north, hunting the larger wildlife. It does take some immense self-control, not going after humans, but as long as we stick to our routine hunting, it’s not so bad.” 

“Even around me?” Lance sits up, growing more interested by the second. “Or am I  _ just  _ irresistible to Keith?” 

Colleen graciously considers the question, even while Keith bemoans,  _ “Please  _ don’t answer that.” 

“I suppose it’s a bit like . . . all vampires have different tastes, like humans. Some prefer sweet, some prefer salty . . . Pidge, for instance, is the  _ saltiest  _ human I have ever encountered.” The teenage girl in question puffs up with pride, says, “Hell yeah, I am,” then goes back to deconstructing the blender. 

“So what am I?” Lance inquires. Keith lowers his head to the table and curses quietly into the wood while Colleen tells him, “Well, I can certainly understand why Keith is so tempted by you. You are  _ very  _ sweet. Like sugar cookies, perhaps.” 

“Kill me,” Keith requests to the void. “Drive a stake through my heart. Set me on fire. Anything.” 

“So I’d appeal more to someone with a sweet-tooth,” Lance concludes. “That’s pretty cool, I guess, how that works. But just so we’re clear, no matter how cool it is, no one here’s allowed to drink my blood without my permission.” 

Matt raises an intrigued eyebrow. “So, if we ask politely . . .?” 

_ “NO,”  _ Keith snaps suddenly, lifts his head and announces, “Okay, that’s it. Family dinner is over. I’m going to show Lance the rest of the house.” He takes Lance’s free hand and drags him up, even as Lance protests, “Hey, I wasn’t done with that—”

He snags another garlic knot as they go, uses that hand to wave at the others before Keith pulls him away from the kitchen. “Lovely meeting you all!” he calls over his shoulder, and they call back some sentiment of the same value. Lance smiles, satisfied at having received the family stamp of approval. But it fades quickly when he turns to Keith, scowling silently, hands shoved deep in his pockets as they ascend another flight of stairs. 

Lance sighs, even as a starburst of anxiety goes off in his chest. “Did I do something wrong?” 

“What?” Keith blinks, gaze flicking to him, almost seeming startled by the question. “Of course not. Everyone seems to like you; you seem to like everyone. It’s great.” 

“You don’t look like you think it’s great,” Lance frowns. “You look upset.” 

Keith is quiet when they reach the top of the final set of stairs, finding themselves at the beginning of a long hallway. “I guess I just—I keep  _ waiting  _ for something to set you off. Like, for you to finally realize how dangerous I am, I guess. And that you’ll get scared and leave.” 

Lance pauses, brows creasing as understanding clicks. Keith’s shoulders are slightly drawn in, like he’s readying himself to be hit. Which is kind of dumb, because he’s a vampire and no one could  _ really  _ do any damage to him, but it still makes him look . . . small, in a way Lance has never seen before. Vulnerable. 

“Hey,” he says softly. He reaches out to tug one of his hands out of his pockets, and Keith doesn’t resist; he lets him thread their fingers together, warm human against frigid vampire. Maybe it shouldn’t balance out so well, Lance thinks, but that doesn’t change the fact that it  _ does.  _ Balance out, that is. They’re good like this. They’re good together. “That’s not going to happen, Keith.” 

“It could happen,” Keith mutters sullenly, but with the tiniest bit of doubt in his voice. It’s barely there—but it’s just enough for Lance to be able to dig his fingernails under and pry back. 

“It  _ won’t,”  _ he insists. “Look, you can call me stupid, or say I’m crazy—” 

“I would never call you those things—” 

“But I’ve never felt this way about someone before,” Lance says over him, squeezing his hand tightly. “You aren’t  _ just  _ a vampire to me, Keith. You aren’t some scary, looming monster to be afraid of. You’re a  _ person,  _ and you’re my friend and my boyfriend, and—a lot of things, Keith. You’re  _ a lot _ to me, and none of that is going to stop mattering just because your pointy teeth are showing or someone mentions how sweet my blood is and how much you like it. You’re not getting rid of me anytime soon, babe.” 

Keith’s eyes are unreadable as he stares down at their hands, locked between them. And then he says, his own voice a whisper, “You’re a lot to me, too, Lance.” 

“I know that.” And really, Lance does. He can’t say he fully understands it—in a lot of ways, he still can’t fathom why someone like Keith would be interested in someone like him, someone so boring and mundane and unremarkable. But he knows that even if he doesn’t get something, that doesn’t make it less true. Keith really likes him, and Lance isn’t going to let his own insecurities cloud that. “C’mon,” he says, nudges Keith’s forehead with his own, smiles. “I want to see your room. Find out what it’s like to be in a  _ real live vampire lair.”  _

“Our whole house is a real live vampire lair,” Keith points out, but he starts walking again anyway, tugging Lance with him by their still-connected fingers. He leads him to the door at the very end of the hall, pushes it open with his free hand. “Here we are,” he says dryly, releasing Lance and stepping aside to let him in first. “Spook-central.” 

_ Spooky  _ is, in fact, the last word Lance would use to describe Keith’s room. His very first thought upon entering is how extraordinarily  _ unextraordinary  _ the space is. The largest wall in the room is entirely glass, like most of the walls of the house that face outside, looking out onto the large stretch of green woods that surround them. That’s pretty much the only exciting feature. Lance’s eyes rove over bookshelves filled with everything from poetry to science fiction, other shelves dedicated to vinyl and  _ cassette tapes,  _ of all things. “Keith, your eighties is showing,” he says, grinning as he plucks one up to further examine it. He doesn’t recognize the artist name, so he sets it back down. Then he turns back to the room, frowning as he realizes the glaring fact that had evaded him during his initial sweep-over. 

Aside from the shelves and the black rug that takes up the center of the floor, there’s not a single piece of furniture. 

And sure, Lance hadn’t expected there to be a  _ bed  _ or anything, since Keith doesn’t sleep. Still, he’d expected  _ something.  _ A sofa, a loveseat, a  _ beanbag chair.  _ “Where are we supposed to make out?” he says with a deep frown. This is, in fact, the most important question Lance has ever asked. 

Keith lifts an eyebrow. “I had no idea you had ulterior motives for getting me alone,” he says. Lance laughs as he moves on to the next shelf, since evidently there’s nothing more exciting to do in here. “With you? Always,” he says lightly, and a moment later he feels Keith sliding up behind him, wrapping his arms around his waist and hooking his chin over Lance’s shoulder. 

He breathes in a little too sharply, then settles, smiling as he pulls out a black, unmarked folder. When he flips it open, he finds . . . sheet music. He blinks in surprise. “You play an instrument?” 

“Piano,” Keith tells him. His breath, unlike everything else about him, feels like summer when it greets the shell of Lance’s ear. “It’s just a hobby. Not a whole lot to do at night, what with the not-sleeping thing.” 

“Play me something,” Lance requests. Really, he demands, but not seriously; he half-expects Keith to say no way, and when he does they’ll move on to something else. But Keith hums, squeezes Lance tighter to him, and says, “Alright.” 

Lance perks up, quiet excitement stirring in his chest. “Yeah?” 

“Yeah,” Keith says, “Come on.” 

Again they go, this time back down the stairs. Down another hallway and into a spacious room; Lance notes that he’d get lost embarrassingly easily in this house without Keith to guide him around. At the center of this room, there’s a glossy, grand piano, and though Lance isn’t very familiar with instruments, he knows that this one was definitely very expensive. It’s not the only instrument in the room, either; there’s a harp in one corner, and something that Lance thinks might be a cello? Some other things, too, all stringed and classical. “Do you play those, too?” 

Keith shakes his head. “Everything else belongs to Allura and Coran. You know, Coran was a professional musician before he died.” 

“Huh. That’s pretty neat,” Lance says, then amends, “The music part. Not the dying part.” 

“Yes,” Keith smirks, “I knew what you meant.” Lance rolls his eyes, thwacks him lightly in the shoulder, and Keith just laughs. “Come on,” he says again, tugging at Lance’s hand, so he does, sitting down on the small bench as Keith takes the other side, close enough for their bodies to press against one another from the hip down. 

Lance watches, almost mesmerized, the way Keith’s fingers naturally fall to rest against the keys. He doesn’t know how he didn’t realize before—Keith has musician’s hands, long and deft fingers, elegant mannerisms. The way they fly gracefully as the first notes ring out, one low tone after another, rising and falling in cadence as the melody picks up. It’s only seconds after he starts that the entire room becomes awash in the sound of his song: it fills all the spaces it reaches, infuses the air with a sort of awed stillness, holds Lance’s breath still in his lungs as the music wraps around him. 

He doesn’t recognize the song at all; it must be something classical, he thinks, because he never listens to classical music, but he thinks that after this, maybe he should start. It’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever heard: it’s a natural rise and fall of softness and intensity, light and dark not battling, but intertwining into something delicate and new. 

Lance almost mourns as it comes to an end. When he looks, though, he doesn’t find a single sheet of music anywhere. “What song is that?” he asks, and his voice is strangely hushed, like he isn’t quite ready to break the silence. 

“It, uh, it doesn’t have a name,” Keith says, shifting slightly. When Lance looks at him, he realizes that he’s . . .  _ absurdly  _ fidgety. Keith never fidgets. “I wrote it the night that we . . . um, you know, the night we kissed for the first time.” 

Lance stares. And stares. “You wrote that.” 

Keith squirms again. He refuses to meet his eyes. “Yeah.” 

“You wrote that,” Lance repeats. “For  _ me?”  _

Keith’s shoulders are tense. “Yeah,” he says again. 

In the same way Keith’s hands naturally find the keys of a piano, so are Lance’s own when he rests one on Keith’s shoulder, when he uses the other to nudge Keith’s face towards him. “Never worry that I’m going to leave ever again,” Lance tells him, words pronounced, each one laced with resolution. “You are  _ absolutely, never ever  _ getting rid of me after that.  _ That  _ is the most romantic shit anyone has ever done, ever.” 

He kisses him, soft but insistent, a lot like the song. The song Keith wrote. The song Keith wrote  _ for him.  _

In the space between their breaths, when they pause, Keith asks, a little incredulous and a lot affectionate, “Are you . . . crying?” 

_“Shut up,”_ Lance says, because _no,_ he is _not_ crying, that would be _so_ _stupid._ And then he kisses him again, and Keith kisses him back, smiling a little against his mouth, and Lance thinks it’s probably the most perfect thing that’s happened to anyone, ever. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so like, idk if it's important enough to need stating, but i kind of merged things from the movie and book together in case anyone was wondering. that's really apparent in this chapter, because i for the life of me could nOt picture the cullens' house the way stephanie meyer was trying to describe it. she was so descriptive about everything but the important details. sighs. 
> 
> also, keith saying "spook-central" is absolutely character development, because we all know that was definitely lance's influence. he's just so adorable as a socially-awkward vampire. i'm having way too much fun with this au lol


	7. sleeping and spending nights

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello! i am back, a little sooner than expected! thanks for the well wishes on moving—it's been a little hectic but everyone's settling in well. i did a lot of writing during my downtime, and now we have an official chapter count, which is both satisfying and a little sad. we're steadily making our way towards the end now. 
> 
> with that said, this chapter is...kind of a bummer? just a little bit. prepare for some angst, but don't worry, it's quickly counteracted by fluff. enjoy :)

“So,” Lance says conversationally. He’s swinging his legs over the side of the counter, feeling vaguely like a child instead of the almost-adult that he is. “The werewolf thing. Is it just a full moon kind of deal or?” 

Hunk glances up from where he’s spraying down a table, fond exasperation lighting his brown eyes as he says, “You’re supposed to be helping clean up.” 

“I am,” Lance protests defensively. “Look.” He sprays his own bottle of cleaner on the counter space beside him once. Twice. It makes a  _ spritz spritz  _ sound. “Helping,” he declares. 

Hunk rolls his eyes and goes back to actually being productive. “Well, yeah, pretty much,” he says in answer to Lance’s question. “The mythology is a lot more accurate on werewolves than vampires, for some reason? I’m guessing because there’s a lot more werewolves than vampires. Vampires have that whole extra layer of mystery around them.” 

“There are more werewolves than vampires?” 

“Mmhm,” Hunk confirms. His spray bottle goes  _ spritz.  _ “It makes sense, when you think about it. Lycanthropy is genetic and can be passed from family member to family member, so our numbers grow a lot more consistently. Not  _ every  _ member of a were-family has the gene, but most of the time it’s the case. But vampires can’t have kids, ‘cause they’re, y’know, undead. It wouldn’t make much sense for them to be able to produce live offspring.” 

“Right,” Lance says slowly. “So that means, like, your moms . . .?” 

“One of my moms,” Hunk corrects. “Yeah. And my little sisters, too.” 

“Cool,” Lance says. He falls silent for a moment, messing with the nozzle of his spray bottle. “Hey, Hunk?” 

Hunk, sensing a change in his friend’s tone, straightens to look over at him. “Yeah?” 

Lance bites his lip. Fidgets a little more. “I need you to be honest, okay?” 

“Alright . . .” Hunk says cautiously. He sets down his cleaning stuff on a table and comes to take one of the seats at the counter. “What’s up?” 

“Do you think I’m bad for Keith?” 

It’s something he’s been turning over in his head for the past couple weeks. Not because anything has been  _ wrong,  _ exactly. In fact, things have been really good with Keith. It’s just . . . Keith had to call off plans tonight to go hunt, and that’s perfectly fine—it’s what Lance had  _ told  _ him to do, and he’s glad Keith feels like he can be honest with him—but it’s just that, Lance  _ knows  _ it’s his fault. Allura says usually they only have to hunt a couple times a month. Keith’s been going out once, sometimes  _ twice  _ a week. 

“What?” Hunk is saying, genuinely bewildered. “No. Why would you think I’d think that?” 

Lance stares at his shoes. The ones Keith got for him. He’s kept them immaculate, even with all of the rain and sludge as the snow’s slowly started melting. “Keith’s been hunting a lot more because of me. I just—I wish he didn’t have to. I wish I didn’t make things so hard for him, you know?” 

Hunk is quiet for a moment, and then he sighs. “Lance, listen. I’m going to tell you something, and I need  _ you  _ to listen to me, okay?” 

“Okay.” 

Hunk nods. Takes another moment to gather his thoughts, exhales slowly through his mouth. “Alright, so, yeah, Keith’s been going out a lot more lately. And some of it probably  _ is  _ because you get to be a little too much sometimes, but honestly? I think a lot of it is just him taking precautions, because he doesn’t want to screw up around you.” 

“Yeah, but he shouldn’t _have_ t—” Hunk holds up a hand to silence him before he can finish the protest. Lance clamps his mouth back shut. 

“Keith is different since you got here, Lance. You can’t see it, obviously, since you didn’t know him before, but it’s almost unbelievable. Do you know how often he smiled before he met you? Maybe once a year.” 

Lance frowns. “You’re being dramatic. Keith smiles all the time.” 

“Yeah, when he’s  _ with you.  _ Or when he’s talking about you. You should see the way he goes on about you when you aren’t there. It’s truly puke-worthy levels of sap. Shiro’s super stoked, by the way. He says if Keith doesn’t propose to you within a year, he’s going to propose to you for him.” 

Lance perks up a little. “So Shiro really likes me? Keith’s not just saying that?” It feels a little strange, calling Mr. Shirogane something so casual, and admittedly, he’s never called him that to his face. But in the long run, it’ll probably be weirder if he keeps calling him Mr. Shirogane, at least outside of school. 

“Yeah, Lance. Shiro really likes you. He thinks you’re good for Keith. And so do I,” Hunk says, mouth quirking into a smile. “Look, just believe me when I tell you, Keith would take hunting every  _ day  _ over not having you in his life in a heartbeat. Or—maybe not a heartbeat. You know what I mean.” 

Lance smiles back as his heart settles back into place. Because yeah, he guesses he does know what Hunk means. “Thanks, buddy.” 

“No problem. Now, get back to work,” Hunk says, plucks the bottle out of Lance’s hand and sprays the nozzle at his shirt. Lance squawks like an outraged bird and hops off the counter to escape his range. “I will not provide free labor for someone who  _ sprays me,”  _ he obstinately remarks. 

Hunk’s response is to spray him again. Evidently, Lance was  _ not  _ out of range. He shrieks indignantly, making a mad dash for the abandoned bottle Hunk left on a far table. The ensuing battle is wrought with late-night adrenaline and high, cackling laughter, slipping across the linoleum and chasing each other like the ridiculous children they truly are. This is how Hunk’s moms find them when they come in to lock up: spent, collapsed in a pile on the spotless floor, spray bottles empty and all of the tables more clean than they’ve probably been since the diner’s opening day. 

They don’t get in trouble, because, “Clean is clean, we’ll take our blessings how they come. We don’t have to know how it got this way. Don’t tell us.” 

Hunk’s parents are the best. They give him leftover pie from the diner when they drop him off at home that night. “See you in the morning,” Hunk says as he slides out of the car, and Lance looks at him and smiles back. His eyes glow strangely in this light, and Lance remembers that they’re getting close to the full moon again. He’ll have to ask Hunk more in-depth questions about how that process works, later. 

“Yeah. Night, Hunk, night, Hunk’s moms.” He shuts the door behind him and the sound echoes as he steps back, waves as their minivan peels out of his driveway. He stands there for a moment, beneath the stars that for once are shining brightly, not a single cloud rolling over the scene. The air is chilly in his lungs, but he’s not even startled to find that it doesn’t bother him so much, anymore. 

He stands there for a little while longer, reveling in the effortless serenity of the night. Then he turns, hands still tucked in the pockets of his winter jacket, and goes into his house. 

  
  


_____

  
  


Lance does not see Hunk in the morning. Or any of his friends, for that matter. When the clock ticks past seven forty, he starts getting antsy. When it slips into seven forty-five, he calls up the stairs, “Mamá! Are you ready to go?” 

No answer. Lance takes a sip of his coffee and waits. He makes a face because he put too much creamer in it again. He keeps drinking it anyway. 

Eight o’clock. That’s it. Lance sets down his half-finished cup, drops his bag on the couch, and goes upstairs to check on his mother. He knocks on her closed door, softly at first, then more insistently. “Mamá? Are you awake?” 

Again, silence is the only sound to greet him. With a sigh, Lance nudges the door open with his fingertips. He steps into the room. 

The lights are off, and though the curtains are open, the clouds are so thick this morning that barely any light filters in. And there’s his mother at the center of this darkness: curled up in bed on her side and staring blankly at the wall. She does look over when he enters, though, and Lance’s heart sinks when he sees how empty her eyes are. 

“The date,” she whispers, and Lance doesn’t know what she’s talking about, so he pulls out his phone to check. And it’s—

Oh. 

“I can’t go to work today, Lance. I can’t . . . It’s.” 

“Yeah,” Lance whispers, his own throat thick with emotion now as he slips his phone back into his pocket. “Where’s your phone? I’ll call in sick for you.” 

Lance does just that, stepping out into the hall to call one of his mother’s coworkers. One of her friends, these days—Lance knows her on a first-name basis. Maureen. She comes over for dinner on weekends sometimes, and she and his mother sit on the front porch and drink red wine and talk so late into the night that her car is still in the driveway when he goes to bed. She says she’ll get someone to fill in for his mother on the phone, now, and Lance breathes a quiet thank you in response before he disconnects. He slips his mamá’s phone into his free pocket, and then he goes back downstairs to make tea. 

She doesn’t drink the first cup. Or the second. Lance doesn’t try to make her; he curls up at the foot of her bed and sits in the dark with her, and when that gets to be too much, he turns on the TV. They’re three episodes into  _ The Office  _ when Lance can’t sit still anymore, so he leaves it on for her and goes to busy himself with anything. He puts on a load of laundry and cleans the kitchen. He lights candles and rearranges the pantry. His phone buzzes throughout the morning and most of the afternoon, and he ignores it. He makes lunch and carries up a plate for his mother, and like both cups of tea, it sits ignored on her bedside table. 

He carries the cold tea down and dumps it in the sink. He takes her a new one. He tells her it’s there, but she doesn’t look at it once. 

Close to dinner time, he brings up one of the slices of pie from Hunk’s family’s diner. She sits up when he announces its presence, takes it when he holds it out. He sits beside her in bed while she cuts delicate bites into it, until halfway through she starts to cry. “No, no, mamá,” Lance says, aching as he takes it back and sets it somewhere else. Then he sits back against the headboard and she curls into his side and he lets her cry, blinking his own dry eyes up at the ceiling. 

“I’m so sorry I’m like this,” she whispers at one point, exhausted and ragged and  _ awful.  _ “You shouldn’t have to see me like this, Lance.” He just shakes his head and holds her tighter. 

“I’m here,” he whispers back. “I’m not going anywhere.” He’s found that there’s never really anything you can say to make a situation like this better, but stating the facts is usually a safer bet than useless platitudes. He doesn’t tell her it’s okay, because it isn’t. But he’s here. 

When she falls asleep, he tucks the covers up around her shoulders and stares for a moment. Even in sleep, his mother looks worn, heavily sad. There are more streaks of gray in her hair now than there were a year ago, he notices distantly. He turns away and takes the plate and the tea. He puts the pie back in the fridge, in case she wants it later. 

There’s an insistent knocking coming from the front door. Lance wearily pads back through the living room to answer it, swinging the door back slowly and ready to tell whoever it is to go away. But then he sees Keith standing there, hands shoved in the pockets of his dumb cropped jacket, hair damp with rain and eyes dark with worry. 

“Everyone’s been texting you all day,” he says. “I’ve been knocking—I thought about breaking in again, but your mom’s car is here so I thought—” He doesn’t finish saying what he thought. Lance holds the door open for him and he glides inside. Takes in how dark the whole place is, aside from the tiny candle flames arrayed all over the room. The living room smells strongly of cinnamon and cherry blossoms. Lance hadn’t looked at the scents before he lit them. He doesn’t know how he feels about the combination.

“What’s wrong?” Keith quietly asks. Lance just shakes his head, rubs blearily at his eyes. Keith takes him by the elbow and leads him over to the couch, sits down and pulls Lance with him. Lance curls into him without a fight, closing his eyes and pressing his nose to Keith’s cold neck. He smells like rain, and the still-wet tendrils of his hair drip onto Lance, but he doesn’t mind. 

“It’s my papá’s birthday today,” he eventually whispers into the silence. Keith stays quiet, waiting, and Lance should elaborate on that, because he knows Keith doesn’t understand, because Lance never talks about his father, but—

He needs a minute, just to breathe, so he does that instead. He breathes in Keith’s rain smell and clings to his neck and Keith starts gently detangling the strands of hair that Lance hasn’t bothered to brush. He’s been running his own hands through it in stress all day. He must look like a mess. He should tell Keith not to look at him. But then Keith would probably say something like,  _ “You still look perfect,”  _ and Lance would break down, and that would just make him look even worse, so he doesn’t say that. 

He breathes in again. Exhales against Keith’s marble skin: “My parents were . . .  _ so  _ in love, Keith. Like, the most in-love people I’ve ever known. They’re the reason why I know what love  _ is.  _ The reason why I know I love you.” He takes another minute to breathe, and Keith is still so quiet, fingernails brushing lightly at his scalp. It feels nice. He closes his eyes. 

“You know he died on their anniversary?” 

Keith’s hand stills. Lance’s next breath stutters. 

“She’s been getting better,” he whispers. “She’s been—talking more. Smiling more. Going out with friends. But when it first happened, she was . . . every day was like this. She was in the car with him when it happened. It was a  _ nightmare.  _ But she’s been getting better. And today is his  _ birthday.”  _ He blinks rapidly, thinks Keith can probably feel his resolve not to cry slipping with every flutter of his eyelashes. They’re getting damp at the corners, now. 

“I miss him  _ so much,  _ Keith. And I miss being home. I miss having my family around when things are hard, because sometimes—I feel like, like I can’t do  _ anything.  _ I can’t help her, I can’t make it better, I can’t bring him back. And she moved us here and she didn’t even tell me  _ why.  _ I don’t know why we’re here and not somewhere else. I don’t—I dont know  _ why.”  _ His voice breaks. The rest of him follows. 

Keith holds him while he cries, and then he holds him when he’s done crying, blinking vacantly into the fabric of Keith’s jacket, feeling empty. His phone buzzes again, the long, drawn-out buzzes that differentiate a text message from a phone call, and Lance fumbles it out of his pocket to check the screen. 

_ Marco calling . . .  _

Shit. 

He sighs tiredly. “I should answer this,” he says. Keith nods. “I can—have you eaten something? I can make you something,” he offers. 

Lance’s smile is brief, flickering and gone. “Sure, vampire boy. As long as it’s edible,” is his only requirement, and then he goes to sit on the stairs to take the call, and Keith disappears into his kitchen. 

_ “Lance?”  _ his older brother’s voice filters into his ear, and Lance closes his eyes and is overwhelmingly grateful that this is a voice call. He doesn’t want Marco to see what state he’s in right now. 

“Hey, Marco,” he says. He knows his exhaustion bleeds through the line. He can practically hear Marco’s concerned frown. 

_ “How are you? How is mamá? Today is . . .”  _

“I know.” Lance rubs at his face with his free hand. His skin is going to  _ hate  _ him later. “Yeah, it’s . . . not good, Marco. Today is hard. Mamá’s having a hard time.” 

_ “And you?”  _

Lance closes his eyes. “I’m having a hard time, too,” he confesses. It feels like a defeat to admit it. He bites his lip. 

Marco sighs.  _ “What can I do? What do you need?”  _

_ I need you to be here,  _ Lance thinks, but won’t say. He can’t do that. It would hurt Marco, and it’s— _ not  _ his fault that things are like this. Marco would get on a plane and come here in a heartbeat if Lance asked. But Marco has a job, and a wife, and two kids that he can’t just up and ditch on a whim just because his little brother had a bad day. 

“I don’t know. I don’t know if there’s anything you can do, I mean.” 

_ “Have you eaten?”  _

He bites his lip again. “My boyfriend’s making dinner.” 

_ “Good.”  _ Marco’s relieved sigh is so present that Lance can almost  feel it  against his ear. “ _ That’s good. You’re not alone, then?”  _

“No.” 

_ “Can I talk to him for a minute?”  _

Lance frowns. Pulls his phone away from his ear to squint at it for a moment before returning it there, making his way to his feet and into the kitchen. “I guess . . .” 

Keith looks up from where he’s sliding a grilled cheese onto a plate, blinking when Lance holds out his phone to him. “Marco wants to talk to you.” 

Keith frowns. “Okay . . .” Taking the phone, he sets the plate on the table, settles a hand on Lance’s shoulder and nudges him to sit down while he listens to Marco talk. Lance can’t hear anything other than Keith’s side of the conversation, so he doesn’t get much from it—a bunch of  _ yeahs,  _ and  _ okays,  _ and  _ mmhms.  _ And then he returns the phone to Lance, and Marco tells him he’ll call back later and that he should focus on eating, and Lance says, “Okay,” and the line disconnects as Marco lets him go. 

“What did Marco say to you?” he asks as he picks up the sandwich. It’s hot, but not so much that it burns his fingertips. It definitely smells like a grilled cheese, so Lance decides to trust it and takes a bite.  _ Holy shit.  _

“Ah, just standard brother stuff. Y’know, make sure you eat and sleep. How am I doing so far?” 

“Ten out of ten,” Lance tells him, closes his eyes. “Where did you learn to make a grilled cheese like this. You can’t even enjoy grilled cheese. How are you perfect at  _ everything.”  _

“Pidge likes grilled cheese when she’s sad. That’s why I know how to make it. I probably can’t make anything else, though, so don’t go crazy with future requests.” 

Lance takes another bite, savoring the perfect blend of bread-butter-cheese. “That’s really sweet, about Pidge,” he says. 

“She’s like my little sister. I mean, I guess. I never had one before.” Keith shrugs. He’d taken off his jacket at some point, Lance realizes, and he’s wearing a black tank top that shows off the lithe muscles of his pale arms. Lance bets Keith doesn’t even have to work out.

Just a few weeks ago, that thought probably would have been at least mildly infuriating. Now, it just fills Lance with stupid, warm and fuzzy affection. 

It fades into the background, though, as he finishes his sandwich and realizes that he should probably take something up for his mother. Lance hesitates, glances over at his boyfriend. “Hey, Keith?” 

“Yeah?” 

“I hate to ask you to do anything else but—do you think you could make another one of those for my mother? Just—she’s barely eaten today and . . .” 

“Of course.” Keith reaches across the table to squeeze one of Lance’s hands in his before he stands up. “Maybe you should go take a shower while I do this.” 

“Is that your polite why of telling me I smell, and not like a delectable piece of cake?” Lance dryly says, and Keith rolls his eyes and tells him, “I know you. A hot shower goes a long way to make you feel better on bad days, so. Go. Do that.” 

That affection swells back up in him as he gets to his feet, wraps his arms around Keith and presses a chaste kiss to his cheek. “Thanks,” he quietly says, “For being here. I know I’m—such a mess right now. You didn’t have to deal with that.” 

But Keith just shakes his head, says, “Of course I’m here. You’re not getting rid of me.” Lance laughs quietly, holds on for a few more seconds before he lets him go. 

Keith really does know him; Lance  _ does  _ feel better, standing beneath the shower’s steady stream, letting the heat work out the tension that’s built up in his shoulders throughout the day. He washes the grime of tears from his face and then goes about the rest of his skin care routine when he gets out of the shower. By the time he emerges from the bathroom dressed in his fluffiest pajamas, he’s a whole new person. 

Keith’s still in the kitchen when he returns, tapping away at his phone with another perfect grilled cheese sitting next to him on the table. He looks up as Lance murmurs another thanks, kisses the top of his head, and carries the plate upstairs. He knocks on the doorframe before stepping inside, and he sees his mother shift to sit up in the glow of the TV light before she reaches over to flick on the lamp. She looks worse in the yellow light, washed out and hair a mess and face puffy from crying. Lance sits down at her feet, holds the plate out in offering. 

“Keith made it,” he says quietly. “You should eat, Mamá.” 

His mother does take it, blinking tiredness and surprise from her eyes. “Keith is here?” Her voice is wrecked. Lance bites his lip, nods. She sighs, less a conscious action and more a reflex, and rests back against the headboard. 

“He’s a good boy, Lance. I’m glad you have him. Tell him I say thank you.” 

“I will.” Lance rubs his palms on his jeans just so he’ll have something to do with them. “Do you need anything else? Another cup of tea, or—” 

“Lance,” his mother interrupts him. For the first time all day, something completely present and stern makes itself known on her face. “I am okay. You’ve been taking care of me all day, and I  _ know  _ that must have been so difficult, so now you need to take care of you. Go to bed,  _ mijo.  _ Tell Keith he’s welcome to stay, if he’d like. I’m going to be alright.” 

Lance thinks about it for a moment before he gives in, sighing before leaning to press a kiss to his mother’s cheek. “Still, let me know if you need anything,” he says softly. “Goodnight, Mamá.” 

“Goodnight, Lance.” 

He shuts the door softly behind him, and Keith is there, standing at the top of the stairs and hesitating. “I, uh, wasn’t sure if you wanted me to still be here . . .” 

“I always want you to be here,” Lance tells him, too tired to be anything but honest. He crosses the hall to his own room and opens the door, waits there for Keith to follow. And he does—he’s right at his side in less than a second, letting Lance grab onto his hand and pull him inside. Climbing into bed, he curls up against Keith’s side and closes his eyes. Keith is so cold against him, but that’s okay, because Lance keeps a nest of blankets on his bed and he burrows right into it. He wonders if it’s impossible for Keith to be anything but cold, or if he’ll wake up tomorrow to a Keith who’s warm for the first time in his undead life. 

“My mom said thanks for the grilled cheese,” he murmurs into Keith’s chest, feeling the rise and fall of lungs that don’t need to breathe. It’s comforting all the same—having another breathing body beside his own. 

“I know,” Keith murmurs back, breath tousling the hair at the top of Lance’s head. “I heard the entire conversation.” 

Lance snorts, but only manages half his usual energy. “Creep,” he says, and Keith scoffs, and he smiles as he shifts further into his space and slings an arm around his waist. He’s comfortable now, toasty warm, and he thinks it won’t be long before he completely passes out. He really hopes he doesn’t snore. That would be embarrassing. 

“Hey, Lance?” Keith says, abrupt, but even more quiet than before. His voice is barely a breath, barely able to be discerned as words and not just the rush of his exhale. Lance hums, not opening his eyes. He’s so far gone that he almost misses Keith’s next words. Almost—but not quite. 

“I love you too.” 

If Lance were more awake, he’d probably make a big deal about that. He’d probably demand to know who told Keith that Lance was in love with him, and then he’d kiss him twenty million times and make him repeat the words over and over. But as it is, all he manages is another sleepy hum, smiling into Keith’s chest and letting the quiet steadiness of his breathing carry him that last bit of distance from consciousness into sleep. 


	8. feels kinda cool in the rager

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> baseball game time!! welcome back to the crack. 
> 
> disclaimer: i know absolutely nothing about baseball. anything that is not accurately depicted is 100% my fault and 100% because i didn't care enough to do a quick google search on the sport lol. enjoy!

“It’s going to storm this evening,” Allura’s saying, thoughtful as she gazes out of the large windows in the cafeteria. “Is anyone thinking what I’m thinking?” 

“That I should have brought my raincoat?” Lance guesses, and frowns sadly down at his lunch. “Curse my optimism.” 

Keith pats him on the shoulder, commiserating. He can always count on Keith. “I’ll go get it for you after lunch,” he offers. 

Lance leans into the touch, mood abruptly uplifted. “I am  _ so  _ in love with you,” he declares, with feeling. 

Across the table, Pidge gags. “I am  _ so  _ ready for the honeymoon phase to be over. I want my normal friends back.” 

Lance sticks his tongue out at her. Allura huffs, her impatience growing. That’s a rare thing for her. Lance guesses she’s really passionate about whatever she’s trying to get to. 

_ “No,”  _ she says. And then she says two words that Lance has never heard together.  _ “Vampire baseball.”  _

Lance blinks.  _ What?  _

“Hey,” Hunk frowns disapprovingly, shaking his spoon at her. A glob of pudding drips off it and onto the table. “Vampire  _ and werewolf  _ baseball. Don’t leave us out.” 

The vampire girl rolls her eyes. “Vampires came up with the concept, Hunk. Therefore: _vampire_ baseball.” Then, before Hunk can argue further, she demands, “Are we playing tonight or not?” 

“I mean, I can text Shiro and ask,” Keith says. “It’s Friday though, so he and Adam might have plans. We’ll see.” 

Allura is almost  _ vibrating  _ with excitement. Lance has never seen her like this before. “This will be  _ so  _ much fun. Lance, you should come and watch.” 

“Yeah, Lance.” Pidge perks up. “You should come. That way I’m not the only person sitting on the sidelines,  _ bored out of my mind.”  _

Lance still barely understands what’s happening, but everyone seems excited and he doesn’t enjoy being left out, so he gets excited too. “Sure, alright. Sounds fun. I’ll let my mom know.” 

He receives his mother’s thumbs-up emoji right as school is letting out, so he has no qualms about following Keith to the parking lot, eager as he takes his usual place behind Keith on his motorcycle. “You should let me drive someday,” he says thoughtfully as Keith passes him the helmet he keeps just for him. Keith cares about his well-being so much. It’s adorable. 

Keith himself is  _ not _ adorable right now, laughing abruptly. “Yeah, no way,” he says. “You’d kill us both within like, two seconds, and I’m not even supposed to be able to die.” 

Lance scowls at the back of his head. “Your lack of faith in me is rude and hurtful, you know.” 

“Oh no,” Keith dryly replies. “At least you’re alive enough to feel those things. Which you wouldn’t be, if I let you drive.” 

Lance is still scowling when Keith peels out of the parking lot. He digs his chin into his boyfriend’s shoulder a little harder than normal, just so he’ll  _ know  _ how annoyed Lance is. But there’s wind in his hair and the first drops of drizzle hitting his face, so pretty quickly Lance has forgotten his annoyance and tilts his head to the gray sky. He never thought he’d love the sight of rainclouds so much. It’s kind of insane, the way love can change your perspective. He used to hate the thought of rain. He still kind of hates dreary weather in theory, but now every time it actually  _ does  _ rain, he thinks of Keith, which makes it a lot harder to actually dislike. 

He still hates snow, though. He will never not hate that stupid, fluffy white source of frozen  _ misery.  _

Keith skids to a sudden, sliding stop in his driveway, and Lance laughs with delight even as he grips Keith’s jacket tighter to keep from flying off. 

There’s a nicely-sized crowd in the driveway waiting to greet them. Pidge is clinging to Matt’s neck like a koala in the same way Lance had that one time Keith took him to the top of a mountain. Hunk’s standing with Romelle and another lanky figure who Lance assumes to be her brother, Bandor. And there’s Allura at the front of them all, an impatient frown on her normally placid face as she informs them: “You’re late.” 

“Late for what?” Keith rolls his eyes. “It’s not even thundering yet.” 

In a humorous twist of irony, the sky chooses the exact moment Keith finishes speaking to crackle. A  _ BOOM!  _ pierces through the gray clouds, and Allura arches a brow at the darker-haired vampire. 

“Which one of us can tell the future, Keith,  _ hmm?”  _ she says haughtily, and then before Keith can respond and Lance can even  _ process  _ that, she continues, “Oh, right,  _ me.  _ I can. And _ I predict _ that if you aren’t on the field by the time the game is set up, I will show no mercy when I completely  _ annihilate  _ you. Let’s  _ go.”  _ With that, Allura spins on her heel and dashes off into the trees, her white hair flashing like a banner before disappearing entirely. 

“Yeesh,” Lance murmurs to Keith, “Allura really loves vampire baseball, huh?” 

“Vampire and werewolf baseball,” Hunk corrects. “But yeah, Allura lives for the sport. It’s the only time she ever fully lets her rage loose, and she goes all out. Don’t worry though—we all have fun, Allura included, and no one’s ever died yet. You’ll be perfectly safe.” 

Lance frowns, though not because he’s particularly worried about his safety. He’s wondering what Hunk means by  _ lets her rage loose,  _ and what Allura could possibly have to be angry about. Then again, he doesn’t really know her that well. 

The others don’t seem too fazed, though. Keith gives a long-suffering sigh and turns to Lance to tell him, “Well, you better hop on so we can get to the field before Allura dumps a bucket of holy water on my head.” Lance doesn’t actually know if holy water affects vampires or if Keith is joking, but he loops his arms around his boyfriend’s neck anyway, because he doesn’t really want to find out by witnessing it. But then Lance remembers the werewolves, and he turns his head to ask them how they plan on getting to the field as fast as Keith, who has the advantage of vampire speed. 

Before he can open his mouth to voice the question, though, they begin to morph in front of his very eyes. With a series of loud, bone-snapping sounds that make Lance cringe, suddenly the three werewolves are in  _ full  _ wolf-mode. Romelle tosses her white-coated head back and gives a short, yipping howl of what sounds like joy before tearing off into the woods, Bandor on her heels. Matt and Pidge follow after them mere seconds later. 

Hunk stays behind, turning honey-golden eyes on Keith and Lance, like:  _ we going or what?  _ Snorting, Keith tightens his grip on Lance’s legs, who is too busy gawking to remember to hold on until Keith says: “Lance, hang on tight or I’m gonna drop you.” 

Lance hastily tightens his grip, and Keith takes off into the woods after the others. Hunk keeps a steady pace at their side, moving smoothly through the trees despite his ginormous size. It’s barely a minute later that they’re exiting the mesh of tight-knit woods onto a wide clearing. The first person Lance notes is Allura, standing at what looks like a base and swinging a bat expertly in her hands like a baton, almost too fast for his eyes to follow. He notices that Shiro and Adam are there too, along with Pidge’s parents and Coran, who’s standing at the pitcher’s mound.  _ The gang’s all here, then,  _ he thinks, and then he grins a little to himself because he’s  _ part  _ of the gang, now. 

Keith lets him down, and Lance almost laments the loss of contact until Keith reaches to link their hands together. Tugging him along, closer to the others, Lance settles into his boyfriend’s side like he belongs there. Because he does. And no one objects to him being there; Shiro turns, smile on his face as he greets him, “Glad you could make it.” And then Pidge is sidling up to him, side-eyeing Keith as she tugs on Lance’s other hand. “And I’m  _ double  _ glad. C’mon, let’s go sit by the trees, as far from these boring losers as possible.” 

“How come you aren’t excited like everyone else?” Lance says curiously as he lets himself be pulled away. He glances regretfully over his shoulder at Keith, who watches them go with unmistakable traces of amusement on his face. 

Pidge scoffs. “Firstly, baseball is the  _ most boring  _ sport to ever exist. And you might think it’s a little exciting at first because they’re all vampires and werewolves, but after a while the supernatural elements lose their cool-factor and it’s just boring again. Trust me, it’s not as fun to watch as it might seem.” 

Lance lifts an eyebrow. “Sounds like someone’s a little envious.” 

But the girl just snorts. “Yeah, no. Even when I’m a vampire, I’m  _ still _ not going to want anything to do with sports. And if turning into a vampire means turning into an immortal  _ jock,  _ then please, I beg you, drive a stake through my heart immediately.” 

Oh, Pidge and her theatrics. The girl would be great in drama club, if only Lance could convince her to join. He snorts. “Yeah, okay.” 

They sit back in the grass to watch anyway, and Lance frowns contemplatively as he realizes Adam is still out there on the field. It looks like he intends to take part in the game—somehow. “Hey, Pidge?” 

“Hmm.” Pidge has unearthed a Nintendo Switch Lite from her backpack and is loading up  _ Animal Crossing. _ She really wasn’t kidding about not caring about vampire (and werewolf) baseball in the slightest. 

“How come Adam is . . . yanno. Like, I don’t mean to butt into something that’s not my business, but if he’s been with Shiro for so long and they’re married, why hasn’t he—y’know.” 

Pidge doesn’t look up from her screen. “You mean, why is he human when he could easily be a vampire?” 

“Well . . . yeah.” Lance guesses it really is that simple to say. He still shifts, a little uncomfortable, on his hands as he waits. 

“Adam doesn’t want to be a vampire,” Pidge explains, also with a ridiculous amount of ease. “He says the idea of living forever sounds tedious and also like the most miserable thing that could happen to a person. But he loves Shiro, and Shiro loves him, and they’ve both accepted the fact that they’re living according to a human timeline. It’s kinda romantic I guess. I mean, not that I know much about romance, or particularly care. But they’re sappily happy, and I guess that’s what’s important, right?” 

“Right,” Lance repeats. Except, the word kind of tastes like sand in his mouth because of how dry it suddenly feels. 

He and Keith are living according to a human timeline, aren’t they? Because Lance is human, and he’s going to keep getting older, and Keith is  _ stuck.  _ And Lance—he loves Keith, he  _ really  _ loves him, and the thought of moving on to other phases of life while his boyfriend never gets to live them makes him feel ill. He doesn’t think he wants that. 

But he isn’t sure if he can commit to a life of immortality, either. It’s . . . not something he’s ever had to think about, before. But it’s a big deal, because—because Lance has plans for the future, and his  _ family,  _ and he can’t just up and ditch them to live forever with his boyfriend, right? And he knows Keith would never  _ ask  _ him to do that, but would he even want Lance to, if Lance wanted to? And what would forever with Keith mean, anyway? Always being perceived as teenagers wherever they go? Repeating their high school days over and over for centuries, like some sort of sad, broken record? 

Lance could go on for hours, spiraling down into that rabbit hole, but luckily for him, a new rumble of thunder chooses then to cloud over the clearing—and the game begins. 

Contrary to Pidge’s unbudging opinion, vampire baseball is the farthest thing from  _ boring  _ Lance has ever witnessed. In fact, regular human baseball is something Lance has always thought of as an unexciting and bland sport, but regular human baseball has nothing on  _ this.  _

Allura’s up at bat first, and when Coran tosses the ball, she hits it on the first go with a thunderous  _ CRACK!  _ And then she’s off, zooming from base to base so quickly Lance’s eyes literally can’t follow. But he’s so focused on the vampire girl that he completely forgets about the others in the game until suddenly,  _ Keith  _ is there, the ball Allura had knocked far off into the trees in hand as he tags her, and Adam is declaring: “You’re out!” 

Allura fumes. The next flash of lightning seems to reflect dangerously in her turquoise eyes. The game continues. 

As the vampires and werewolves settle into a rhythm, Lance suddenly remembers something. Turning to Pidge, he says, “So, Allura can see the future?” 

“Oh, yeah. It’s her vampire gift,” Pidge says. Then she looks up at him and squints. “Wait, you didn’t already know that?” 

“Uh, no.” Lance is pretty sure he would’ve remembered if someone told him Allura can  _ read the future.  _ “What’s a vampire gift?” 

“Y’know, like. How Keith can read minds? I’m assuming Keith told you he can read minds. Because he was super peeved for weeks over how he can’t read yours.” 

“Keith did tell me that,” Lance confirms. Pidge nods. 

“Right. So like, none of us really know how it works, but sometimes vampires have extra heightened senses beyond the obvious.” Pidge waves her hand at the field for emphasis, as Romelle tackles Matt into the grass. “Ha,  _ LOSER!”  _ Pidge momentarily pauses in explaining to yell, and Matt glares at her, sticking out his tongue as he gets back to his feet. As he turns away, she continues. “Keith can read minds. Allura can see the future—but only like, super ambiguously. She can only see things that are set in stone to happen, like thunderstorms or things like that. She couldn’t, for example, tell you whether you’re going to have Lucky Charms or Fruit Loops for breakfast, because those are decisions you make on the spot.” 

“I’m with you,” Lance nods. He wonders how this topic’s never come up before or how Keith’s failed to mention it. Then again, Lance has never questioned the mind reading thing too deeply. Vampires are ridiculously more complicated and nonsensical than the mythology makes them out to be. “So who else has magic vampire gifts?” 

“Just Shiro. He has this freaky ability to like, manipulate peoples’ emotions. That’s probably why he meditates so much—so he doesn’t go insane from feeling everyone else’s feelings all the time.” 

Lance blinks at that, trying for a moment to imagine what it would be like to feel everyone’s emotions all the time. It honestly doesn’t sound like a whole lot of fun. “Yikes.” 

Pidge snorts. “Yeah. Anyway, I kind of hope I’ll get a vampire gift. Maybe x-ray vision or a super sonic scream that can shatter eardrums. I mean, those are far-fetched examples, but it would be cool anyway.” 

“Yeah,” Lance agrees. He wonders if he would get a vampire gift if he ever Turned, and what it would be if he did. Probably something lame, like the ability to get himself into even more dangerous situations than he already does. Like, he’ll walk outside on a perfectly sunny day and immediately get swept away by a freak tornado. 

Lance focuses back on the game just in time to watch Keith take his turn at bat. He swings with the same precise focus as Allura, but there’s something more reckless about the way he holds himself that keeps Lance enraptured. So far, everyone’s managed to hit the ball on the first try, and Keith is no different as the bat connects, another thunderous crack ringing out as he tosses the bat to the side and takes off. And he’s  _ fast— _ faster than the others, definitely, fast enough that he’s a blur of black and red in Lance’s vision until his foot hits home base again. He’s the first one to manage a home run the entire game, and Lance hops to his feet and cheers like the supportive boyfriend he is. Keith looks over and grins, and then he trots over to where he and Pidge are, disregarding the scathing look Allura gives him for stepping out of the game. 

“Are you having fun?” Keith asks, and Lance beams and says “Yeah!” while Pidge mutters in the background,  _ “No.”  _

“You’re so awesome out there. It’s really cool to watch how you guys play. Definitely the most intense game of baseball I’ve ever seen.” Lance loops his arms around Keith’s shoulders to reel him in for a kiss, ignoring Pidge’s background complaining. But he can’t ignore Allura when, right as Lance is about to close the distance, she shouts: “Stop!” 

Lance feels Keith tense, and for a moment he frowns, annoyed that Allura cares so much about the game that he can’t even kiss his boyfriend for  _ one  _ second. But then he registers the genuine  _ panic  _ in her voice, and sees the dark cloud that comes over Keith’s face, and suddenly Lance feels incredibly uneasy. 

“What . . . what’s wrong?” he says uncertainly, but Keith doesn’t answer. He just tucks Lance under his arm and spins them both, beginning to speedwalk over to where everyone else is gathering around Allura. Pidge is on their heels, confusion written all over her own face as she slings her backpack over her shoulders. 

“What’s up, ‘Lura?” she’s the first one to dare asking when they’re all standing in a circle. Allura has her lips pursed, eyes dark as she seems to see something that no one else can. Lance wonders if she’s just had a vision. 

And then he knows she has, when she gravely tells them: “Zarkon is coming.” 

Lance doesn’t know what that means, or what the quiznack a Zarkon is, but by the way everyone else tenses up, he gleans that it’s probably a big deal. And not a good one. Shiro’s mouth tightens as he tugs Adam closer to him, wrapping a protective arm around his shoulders. 

“How much time do we have to get them out of here?” 

“I don’t—I don’t know. I don’t think much time at all,” Allura says fretfully. Guiltily, as she clasps her hands in front of her. “I am— _ so  _ sorry. I should have seen it before. But I was so excited over the game, I—” 

“It’s alright, Allura,” Coran says, placing a comforting hand on her shoulder. “We understand that you cannot predict  _ everything.  _ What’s important is getting our human friends away from here as quickly as poss—” 

But before Coran can finish his sentence, before anyone can make the  _ slightest  _ movement, Lance watches everyone tense up again as, at the other end of the clearing, three figures emerge. 

Even from this far away, Lance can tell that all three figures are tall. Graceful as they glide over, two dark heads and one pale white. The most muscular of them is at the center of the group. This is all Lance is able to discern before Keith pushes him backwards and suddenly he, Pidge, and Adam are hidden by a barrier of vampires and werewolves. 

“Zarkon,” Allura snarls. All Lance can see of her now is her back, her long white hair flowing behind her in the slight breeze. The thunder is still intermittently crackling overhead, and with the combination of dark looming clouds over them, Lance is beginning to feel sufficiently freaked out. 

“Allura. How nice to see you,” the one who Lance guesses must be Zarkon says smoothly. Something about his voice makes Lance’s skin crawl. “How has the past century treated you?” 

“It would have been far more pleasant, were you not in it,” Allura says, and wow, this is some  _ major  _ hostility Lance is picking up from her. He wonders how it must feel to Shiro, and if he’s trying to give her any of his zen. But then again, maybe Shiro agrees with her animosity. They don’t seem to like this guy all that much. “What are you doing here, Zarkon?” 

“Why, my family and I were just passing through the neighborhood when we heard the sound of a baseball game going on. We thought you wouldn’t mind if we joined in.” 

“I actually want no part in this,” another voice Lance doesn’t recognize mutters sullenly. He goes ignored as Allura bristles. 

“Wouldn’t  _ mind?  _ Of course we  _ mind.  _ You are not  _ welcome  _ here, and neither is your family. Leave us at once.” 

Zarkon sighs, in the way adults sigh when they’re tired of their children's antics. “Oh, Allura, are you still hung up over what happened a hundred years ago? It really is time you let that go, don’t you think?” 

“Let it  _ go?”  _ Allura seethes. She’s tense like a lioness poised to attack. Lance wonders if someone is going to have to hold her back from attacking this guy, but it definitely won’t be him. Actually, he isn’t sure anyone would be strong enough to hold her back. “You  _ killed  _ my  _ father.”  _

Alright then. Yeah, no one’s going to be able to stop her from ripping this guy to shreds. If Lance was a vampire, he’d probably help her. 

“Oh, don’t be so dramatic. It’s Alfor’s own fault for getting in my way. You must certainly be used to the cycle of life and death by now. After all, I’m sure you’ve killed your fair share of humans by now. In fact . . . I can smell that you’ve brought a few snacks along with you.” 

Lance stiffens.  _ That doesn’t sound good.  _

“They aren’t food, they’re  _ family,”  _ Shiro says, and Lance is a little stunned by the low growl in his voice. And also a little touched—Shiro thinks of him as  _ family?— _ but this isn’t really the time or place for warm fuzzy feelings. “You know the lifestyle that we keep here. You are not welcome to any of the humans who live in these parts. Either accept these terms or get out, before you force our hand to violence.”

Zarkon only laughs at the threat. “Oh, don’t test me, Shiro. We all know that the way your family chooses to live is laughable at best, an abomination to our kind at worst. What sort of vampire refuses to feed on humans? To follow the instincts that are natural to us, to use the abilities that were given to us? We are higher beings, and we must  _ act  _ like it. Anything less makes you a lesser being, and one not worth respecting.” 

Again, that other voice sighs, sounding peculiarly like a bored teenager.  _ “Father,  _ don’t you realize how old-fashioned you sound? This is the twenty-first century. We must be open to everyone’s alternative lifestyles, no matter how strange or questionable they may seem to us. Like the colony of Argentinian vampires we met a while back, for example. Don’t you remember—” 

_ “Silence,  _ Lotor,” Zarkon hisses. “I do not have time for your foolish speeches on new age philosophy. Can you not  _ smell  _ the sweet, delectable blood of one of the humans they are attempting to hide from us? That blood is rare, and it is  _ going  _ to be mine.” 

Lance is so busy thinking about what a stereotypical movie villain Zarkon is that he nearly misses the fact that,  _ oh.  _ Sweet, delectable blood. He feels both Adam’s and Pidge’s gazes land on him, and it’s almost offhand, the distant way he realizes:  _ oh. He’s talking about me.  _

“You can’t have Lance,” Keith growls, low and angry and  _ vicious.  _ It sends a thrum of something through Lance, and after a moment’s contemplation he determines that it’s definitely not fear. Why is it that everything about Keith is so ridiculously  _ hot?  _ he laments. It shouldn’t be legal. 

“Ah.  _ Lance.  _ So I see it has a name,” Zarkon hums, and  _ that  _ sends a bolt of definite fear through Lance. “And what is to stop me from simply taking him from you anyway?” 

“It won’t just be Keith you’ll be fighting. It will be  _ all  _ of us,” Allura replies coldly. “Don’t test us, Zarkon. We will show no mercy. Lance—and the others—are off limits.” 

The way Allura is acting now makes the Allura who was intensely into a baseball game look like the most friendly girl-next-door you could ever meet. Allura now is  _ terrifying.  _ She’s definitely not someone Lance would want to mess with. 

After a moment of tense, heart-stopping silence, Zarkon appears to come to the same conclusion. “Very well,” he says, still with that same smooth, emotionless voice. “We will be taking our leave, then. It was lovely to see you again.” 

With that, the three figures turn and leave, as swiftly and as silently as they had come. But no one dares to breathe until they disappear within the trees. And they remain silent for a few moments after that. 

“He isn’t actually leaving,” Allura eventually murmurs. “He’s just waiting for the opportune moment. As soon as we take our eyes off of Lance, he’s going to strike.” 

At that, everyone turns to look at Lance. He shifts uncomfortable on his feet, gaze falling naturally to Keith, who’s at his side as soon as Lance makes eye contact. He’s wrapping an arm around his shoulders, tucking him protectively against his side as he states, with no room for argument, “Then we won’t take our eyes off him until Zarkon’s been dealt with.” 

“Agreed,” Shiro says grimly. “But something tells me it won’t be that easy. Zarkon’s never been one to give up without a fight.” 

“We’ll need to form a plan,” Allura agrees. But then she must see something on Lance’s face—anxiety, maybe. Truthfully, he doesn’t really  _ know  _ what he’s feeling in the moment, but anxious wouldn’t be too unbelievable. There’s a creepy, vegetarian-phobic vampire who wants Lance’s blood. “But not at this precise moment. Keith, perhaps you should take Lance home for a little while, so he can settle down a bit while we regroup. Pack a bag—we may have to get him out of the state for some time.” 

_ “What?  _ I might have to  _ leave?”  _ Lance demands thinly. “I—I can’t  _ do that.  _ My  _ mamá—”  _

“We will figure it out,” Shiro says calmly, settling a hand onto Lance’s shoulder. Immediately, a rush of tranquility that is definitely not his own rises up to meet his sudden panic, and Lance takes a deep breath. Marginally calmer now, he nods, and then he nods again. 

“Okay. Okay. We . . . will figure this out. Yep,” Lance says, with another slow exhale and a quiet, jittery laugh. He turns to Keith and pleads, “But  _ please  _ take me home, first. I seriously need to sit down for a minute before I pass out.” 

After that, things happen pretty quickly. Keith takes him home, not even bothering with the motorcycle as he zips through the trees, past his house, and then continues on. Hunk and Romelle keep a steady pace on either of their sides—they’re banking on their strong werewolf scents to overpower Lance’s human one, at least for now—and Lance just shuts his eyes and tucks his face against Keith’s neck, feeling unusually motion-sick until Keith finally comes to a stop in his driveway. He sets Lance down, gives him a moment to regain his bearings as he glances up and down the street. 

“Hunk, Romelle—you guys stand guard out here. I’m going to take Lance inside and make sure his mother doesn’t suspect anything’s wrong. We’ll rendezvous and head back in an hour. Sound good?” Keith says, eyes flickering to Lance’s by the end, and he realizes that Keith is waiting for him to give the okay. So even though  _ nothing  _ feels okay, he shakily says, “Y-yeah. Sounds like a plan.” 

Inside, his mother is humming along with the soft Latin pop playing through her phone speakers as she makes dinner. “Oh, hello boys,” she greets warmly, turning her smile first on her son, then Keith as he steps into the kitchen behind him. “Did you have fun while you were out? Keith, are you staying for dinner?” 

“Sure, Ms. McClain,” Keith says agreeably, with a subtle glance at Lance. His eyes seem to say:  _ act natural,  _ so Lance forces himself to snap out of it and becomes just that. 

“We played baseball with his family and some friends, and it was  _ wild.  _ You should’ve seen it—Keith runs super fast. Like some kind of animal,” Lance babbles, forcing humor into his expression as he elbows Keith. His mother laughs good-naturedly, ruffling his hair up when he ducks past her to get some glasses from the cabinet and fills them with ice and water from the fridge. Keith perches on one of the chairs at the table, stiffly watching Lance move around, but he manages to make it seem like a  _ I’m-a-stranger-in-my-boyfriend’s-house  _ kind of stiffness, and not a  _ my-boyfriend-is-in-mortal-danger  _ kind. Lance comes back over to the table, sets one of the glasses in front of Keith as he takes his own seat beside him, and watches Keith take a small, dutiful sip of water. He remembers Keith saying that all food tastes like an aftertaste of actual food and wonders what that means water tastes like, since water doesn’t have much of a taste to begin with. 

His mother joins them at the table for dinner shortly after that, during which Lance stuffs his face and Keith politely picks at his own plate while answering the casual questions Lance’s mother directs at him.  _ What’s your family like? What are your interests? Oh, your brother-in-law is Dr. Whitaker? I work with him, you know. What a lovely young man.  _ Keith carries on the conversation easily, never making it obvious when he glances at the clock, even when it ticks past half an hour. 

Lance tries not to make it too obvious when he stands, picking up his empty plate to carry over to the dishwasher and then stretching his arms above his head. “Well, it’s been a pretty long day, and I just remembered that I have an essay due for English on Monday that I haven’t even started yet. So, uh, this might have to be goodnight, Keith.” He makes a show of looking apologetically regretful. Keith is equally subdued when he nods, coming over to set his own empty plate in the dishwasher the same way he watched Lance do it. 

“That’s alright. I should be getting home, anyway.” He softly kisses Lance’s cheek and steps away, and Lance’s heart does a somersault even though the gesture is mostly for show. “Thank you for letting me stay for dinner, Ms. McClain. It was wonderful.” 

“Oh, you know you’re welcome here anytime,  _ mijo,”  _ Lance’s mother affectionately says with a smile. 

They both see Keith out, Lance getting one last meaningful look from his boyfriend before he shuts the door and is alone with his mother. With a noise somewhere between a groan and a sigh, Lance stretches his arms above his head and says, “Well, I’m pretty beat. I’m gonna go start that essay and then probably hit the sack early. Do you need help with anything first?” 

His mamá hums. “No, I don’t think so. Go work on your paper. And if I don’t see you again tonight,  _ buenas noches.”  _

_ “Noches.”  _ Lance barely is able to hold back his sigh of relief until he gets to the top of the stairs. He hears the sound of the dishwasher starting, then of his mother moving into the living room to turn on the television. As he quietly shuts his bedroom door behind him, he thinks that he’s in the clear for the night. 

Keith is sitting on his bed, anxiously tapping his fingertips against one another. “We need to hurry,” he says. “How quickly can you pack?” 

“How many nights am I packing for?” Lance tries to keep his voice smooth, but knows even as he crouches to unearth a duffle bag from under the bed that Keith can hear the slight shake. 

“At least one. Maybe two. We’ll try not to let it be any longer than that.” Keith means to sound reassuring, but all Lance can think is:  _ shit. How am I going to explain a two-day absence to my mamá?  _

_ “How _ am I going to explain a two-day absence to my mamá?” 

Lance is haphazardly tossing clothes into his bag, now. Keith sighs quietly. “I was thinking about that. How likely would your mother be to believe that I stole you away for a weekend getaway trip to Malibu?” 

Lance pauses in his packing to look at Keith, wide-eyed. “We’re going to Malibu?” 

“Shiro and Adam have a house there. So yeah, it seems like our best option right now.” 

Lance nods, turning back to his dresser as he thinks it over. “Well, she wouldn’t be likely to believe it, probably. I mean, I tell my mamá  _ everything.  _ But . . .” He hesitates. 

Keith presses. “But?” 

“She’d be more likely to believe I up and left without notice than vampires,” he reluctantly admits. “Plus, we’ve been a little—distant, lately. I guess I could use that to my advantage.” With a sigh, Lance zips up the bag. He stills needs to grab his bathroom stuff, but once he does that, he’ll be good to go. 

He steps back, meeting Keith’s eyes as the grim reality settles over him. 

“I am going to be in  _ so  _ much trouble when I get home.” 


	9. turning it out

Back at Keith’s house, everyone is gathered anxiously in the living room. And they have a guest. 

It’s the pale-haired vampire from before. The one that Lance  _ thinks _ Zarkon called Lotor. 

Up close, he’s even more ethereal-looking, the way all vampires seem to be. (Of course, he has nothing on Keith. But seriously, his hair is  _ so  _ shiny and silky-looking. Lance wonders what shampoo he uses.) He also has the eternal frown of an easily-irritable teenager on his face, like he was Turned at sixteen and is just destined to be stuck like that forever. Which, Lance supposes, is literally what happened. 

Allura doesn’t look too happy that he’s here. She’s at the far end of the room, scowling as she perches on the arm of one of the expensive white sofas. “Tell us whatever you came to tell us and get out. I do not make it a habit to associate with  _ Zarkon’s  _ clan.” 

“Understandable,” Lotor says. He has that same silky quality to his voice that Zarkon has, but unlike the other, older-looking vampire, Lotor doesn’t try to use that quality to his advantage. It’s more like an accent he’d accidentally picked up and can’t seem to shake. “My parents are  _ such _ dull company. Often times I escape into rural parts of Europe to have some time away from them, but unfortunately, they always seem to find me. My mother Haggar is a bit, ah, how would you describe it? She’s a bit of a . . .  _ helicopter mom.”  _

“Okay,” Pidge blinks. “But what does that have to do with us? Or protecting Lance?” 

Lotor heaves a long-suffering sigh. “My parents always find me because my father is one of the most skilled trackers on Earth. Especially with my mother’s help. They catch a single whiff of my scent and it’s all over. What I’m saying is, your best attempts to keep your friend safe are most certainly already doomed to fail.” 

Lance feels himself tensing up at the words. Keith senses this and reaches to lace their fingers together between them, and admittedly, the touch does make Lance feel marginally better. 

“But why would you say that?” Lance finds himself asking. “What makes your parents so good at stalking people?” 

“Well,” Lotor gives another tired, grudging sigh. “My mother is a witch.” 

Lance blinks. “Uh—look, dude, I get that you and your parents might have some differences, but maybe show a little more respect? Like, no matter how strained my relationship with my mother could be, I’d  _ never  _ call her a witch. It’s rude, and frankly, makes me more inclined to dislike you.” 

Lotor doesn’t look chagrined by Lance’s speech. In fact, his expression doesn’t change at all as he blandly says, “No. My mother is literally a witch.” 

“Come again.” 

Lotor rolls his eyes. “A  _ witch,”  _ he repeats a third time. “You know, magic spells, crystal balls, florescent potions, poisoned apples. She’s a witch. That, combined with my father’s heightened vampire tracking ability, makes them nigh invincible.

“Right. That totally makes sense,” Lance says, managing to maintain his breezy tone, though now he’s feeling significantly more ill than he had before learning this information. “So I really am doomed, then?” 

_ “No.”  _ Keith shakes his head, mouth tense, and Lance can tell he’s trying to stay calm for his sake, but he isn’t doing a very good job. “We’re—we’re  _ going  _ to figure this out. We  _ will.  _ You’re going to be fine.” 

Shiro is at Lance’s other side, suddenly, settling a hand firmly onto his shoulder. Lance jumps, turning to look up at the taller vampire, who meets Lance’s bewildered expression with a determined one of his own. “We’re going to do all we can to keep you safe,” he tells him. Oddly, even though Shiro’s making much less of a promise than Keith, Lance feels his anxious heart settle at that. He knows Keith’s must, too—well, figuratively speaking—, because he feels him relax minutely against his other side. 

“Okay,” Allura says, redirecting the attention to herself as she clasps her hands together. Her own face is drawn in the same severe, determined lines as Shiro’s. “So, we have no hope of outrunning Zarkon and Haggar. This means we have no choice but to intercept them. You do understand what this means, correct?” She directs the question to Lotor. Lance has no idea what any of this means, but evidently the pale-haired vampire does, because he nods passively. 

“Mortals only have to put up with their parents for a single lifetime. I have had to put up with mine for  _ nine.  _ Perhaps it sounds cold-hearted, but I do not think I will miss them  _ too  _ terribly once they are dealt with. It is time.” 

Well, that sounds terribly ominous. Lance looks from Lotor to Allura, to Shiro, to Keith, back to Allura. “Wait, you mean like . . . like, you’re gonna have to  _ kill  _ them?” Admittedly, Lance doesn’t know much about the two vampires in question, and what he does know doesn’t paint them in a very favorable light. Still, murder is a big deal, and Lance isn’t sure how he feels about his friends plotting an  _ actual murder  _ because of him. 

“It is the only way,” Allura says gravely. Seeing Lance’s conflicted expression, her own face softens. “Lance, I know it must seem scary, and perhaps inhumane. But Zarkon and Haggar have been around for nine hundred years, and they have not used those years to better the world. They kill humans remorselessly. They treat them like—like  _ livestock.  _ My father . . .” Allura’s eyes dim, and whatever protests Lance may have still had die then and there. 

Right. She had mentioned that Zarkon killed her dad. She says nothing further about that, and Lance doesn’t ask her to. He feels sick in a different way now. He feels—empathetic pain for Allura, and  _ anger,  _ because even though his own father’s death had been terrible . . . if he had been  _ murdered,  _ and his killer was allowed to go free, to continue walking the earth for nine hundred years . . . 

Yeah, okay. Lance feels resolve settle over his limbs. Zarkon  _ has  _ to go. 

“What do I need to do to help?” he asks, and watches as surprise blinks its way onto the others’ faces at his readiness to take part in their murder scheme. But none of them quite seem to have an answer for him; they all look at each other, hesitant and a little bit lost. It’s not the most comforting thing, but luckily, Lotor steps in once again. 

“Well, your guard dog over there isn’t going to like it,” Lotor begins dryly, eyes flicking to Keith and then back to Lance. “But the way I see it—there’s only one way you will be able to pull this off successfully. And it involves you acting, essentially . . . as bait.” 

Lotor is right: Keith doesn’t like it, and Lance can tell by the way he immediately stiffens, by the way he reaches out to snag Lance’s sweater sleeve in a death grip. None of the others do, either; he can see the tension infusing their limbs, straightening their spines as they immediately rise in protest. 

Lance might like the sound of Lotor’s plan least of all, but  _ someone  _ here has to be willing to hear him out. And clearly, none of the others are going to be the first to budge. 

So, “Alright, I’ll bite,” he sighs. “Tell me more.” 

  
  


_____

  
  


The plan is, essentially as follows: 

Lance is, in fact, the bait. Keith, Allura, and Hunk are taking him to Malibu like Keith had originally said was the plan. Thing is, now they’re  _ counting  _ on Zarkon locking in on Lance’s trail and following them. The others are going to follow behind, catch up with Zarkon and Haggar in what they’re hoping will be a surprise ambush. (They’re kind of banking on the two Crazies being so obsessed with Lance that they just completely lose the ability to sense anything else.) And then they’ll take them down, hopefully for good, and Lance will be able to come back home in time to get grounded for one month instead of two. 

Lance hates the plan. But everyone else seems reasonably confident that it will work, so he’s deciding to trust them. 

At least, he thinks, he gets to be with Keith. There hadn’t even been a debate that Keith would be going with him; everyone had taken one look at the protective arm over Lance’s shoulders and the resolved, deadly fire in his eyes and just been like:  _ alright, so Keith’s going with Lance. Who else?  _

Allura had wanted to stay with the others and get in on the stealth murdering action, but in the end Shiro had decided she would be the best to send along with Lance. “You’re one of the strongest we have,” he’d said, “I would feel better if you were with Lance, in case Zarkon gets there before we can.” Allura hadn’t seemed too happy with that, but she’d agreed, and Lance had been relieved because he needs all of the most capable bodyguards he can get his hands on. 

Which leads to his third bodyguard, Hunk. “I’m coming because you’re my best friend, and like  _ cheese  _ am I gonna let some bad vampire hurt you,” he’d sniffled before picking Lance up in a bone-crushing hug, and even though Lance had lost his ability to breathe for a moment, he’d felt his own eyes prickling up with tears. 

“Aww,  _ buddy,”  _ he’d sniffled back, and everyone else had just stood there, bewildered, until the moment ended and it was time to pile themselves into Allura’s expensive white something-convertible. Lance doesn’t know much about cars, but what he  _ does  _ know is that the seat warmers are  _ fantastic,  _ and the backseats are adequately comfortable enough to be prime real estate for cuddling with Keith. And falling asleep on Keith. And waking up to Keith’s hand in his hair, a blanket over their laps, and his incredulous voice in his ear saying:  _ “How  _ can you manage to sleep at a time like this?” 

“I’m a man of many talents,” Lance murmurs, pressing his nose against Keith’s for-once warm neck. Must be because he’s been leeching off of Lance’s warmth. “What time s’it?” 

“Really late,” Keith replies, “or early. You can go back to sleep, if you want. We still have a while longer before we’re there.” 

“How can I manage to sleep at a time like this?” Lance mimics, but honestly, he just might. “Any sign of Evil Vampires One and Two?” 

“Not yet. Shiro texted a while back to say they’re on their way. But they haven’t run into them yet.” 

“Huh. Alright.” Lance closes his eyes, shuffles just that much closer to Keith’s side, and goes back to sleep. 

When he wakes up again, they aren’t in the car anymore. His cheek is pressed against Keith’s firm chest, which is  _ very  _ pleasant to wake up to, though the sensation of moving is a bit jarring. He picks his head up to squint at their surroundings and realizes that they must’ve finally gotten to the house while he was sleeping. Keith is carrying him up a flight of stairs. 

“G’morning,” he says, even though he has no idea whether it’s morning yet or not. Until he catches a glimpse out of a window at the end of the hall when Keith reaches the landing and sees the sun beginning to spill into the blue sky.  _ Blue sky.  _ It’s been so long since Lance has seen a perfectly clear sky that it immediately wakes him up the rest of the way, and he peels himself out of Keith’s grip to rush over to the window. 

What he finds is even  _ better  _ than just a blue sky and the beginnings of morning sunshine. He finds the  _ ocean:  _ bright and beautiful where the sunlight catches on the rippling water, white-tipped waves crashing into the shore just beyond them. It’s breathtaking, and maybe it’s a different ocean on the other side of the country from the one he grew up next to, but it looks like  _ home.  _

Lance’s heart does something complicated in his chest. He’s happy and sad, excited and—homesick. But most of all, he  _ needs  _ to be on that beach. 

“Can we go down there?” he says, turning to tug at Keith’s shirt, where he’s come up to stand behind him. “I need to be down there like,  _ yesterday,  _ Keith.” 

“I don’t see why not,” Keith says. “I mean, sure, there’s a pair of killer vampires after your blood, but sure, let’s have a beach day.” 

Lance smiles sunnily at Keith’s deadpan expression, leans up to press a loud, smacking kiss to his cheek. “And  _ that’s  _ why you’re the best boyfriend,” he declares. Then he makes Keith go back to the car to get his suitcase. 

“You . . .  _ seriously  _ planned for a beach day,” Keith is saying about five minutes later, blinking as Lance emerges from the bathroom in his swim trunks, a tank top, and a pair of flip-flops. “While two killer vampires are after you.” 

“I was hopefully optimistic that your brother had the good taste to have a house near the beach,” Lance says. “And look at that, my optimism did me a solid for once. His house is  _ on  _ the beach.” 

“That wasn’t the point,” Keith sighs, while Lance goes back to riffle through his bag for his sunglasses. 

“Wait.” It doesn’t occur to Lance until he already has the sliding glass door to the back patio open, pausing to look back at Keith worriedly. “What if someone sees you being all vampirey?” 

“It’s a private beach. It’s fine,” Keith says, plucking Lance’s sunglasses from his face to put them on himself as he slides past him onto the back patio. Lance follows, mouthing  _ ‘private beach’  _ to himself. 

Man, he did even better with claiming Keith than he thought. Wait until he brags to Rachel about  _ this.  _

Thinking about his sister while standing in the sand brings such a heavy pang of nostalgia to Lance’s ribcage that he almost can’t breathe. He recalls days spent soaking up the sunshine, gossiping about the boys in their classes and laughing over snowcones. He thinks that he should call her when he gets home, and then he wonders when  _ Forks  _ became equal to  _ home  _ in his mind. He thinks it’s strange, how home can be a small town in Washington and an overcrowded city in Florida, all at once. 

And how it can be Keith, all dazzling sparkles beneath the UV rays and looking over at Lance, a peculiar look on his face as he tries to read what’s going on in his head. And then he catches Lance looking at him, and he smiles more brilliantly than his skin or the sun itself, and Lance’s breath gets caught between his teeth as he realizes how  _ lucky  _ he is, to have all of these places and people to call  _ his.  _

And then Keith tilts his head, and the sparkles fling themselves directly, not-very-pleasantly into Lance’s corneas, and he blinks away the spots in his vision and goes,  _ “Ow,”  _ and remembers an idea he’s been turning over for a while. 

_ “Shit,  _ I forgot my sunscreen,” he says, “You know, if I don’t wear sunscreen, I’ll probably die.” 

Predictably, Keith takes off Lance’s sunglasses, showcasing his eyes widening with alarm. Sometimes it’s adorable that Keith has forgotten so much about being human in spite of the fact that he lives with two of them. Sometimes, though, it’s honestly kind of ridiculous. “Wait, is that true?” 

“Oh, yeah,” Lance gravely nods, biting back his smile.  _ “Deathly  _ true.” 

Keith takes off back into the house without another word and Lance only has a moment to himself to snicker before his boyfriend is back, a bottle of SPF-50 in hand. “Thanks, sunshine,” Lance smiles sunnily, takes the bottle, and turns it over to upend the contents into his palm. Then he gives the bottle back to Keith, who holds it dutifully while Lance transfers some of the lotion to his other hand. And then he proceeds to slather it all over Keith’s face. 

“What the—” Keith sputters, but amusingly stays put, sulking like Lance’s niece and nephew as Lance spreads the sunscreen over his face. 

“I never forget to wear sunscreen,” Lance says, offhand, as he finishes rubbing the lotion into Keith’s forehead. “My  _ abuela  _ would probably have my head if I did.” 

“Why are you doing this,” Keith sighs. “I’m not in danger of burning, Lance.” 

“I know that.” Lance steps back to squint at Keith’s face, tilting his head more into the light with his fingertips. “But I had a thought the other week. If it’s the UV light that makes you go all glittery, then  _ surely  _ sunscreen can stop it from happening, right? I mean, it could be a dumb idea, but it would be  _ great  _ if it works, because that’ll make it so much easier for you to meet my family.” 

Keith blinks, a little dumbstruck. “You want me to meet your family?” 

“Mmhm,” Lance hums, moving on to Keith’s shoulders. Keith looks great in tank tops. “Hey, have I told you how hot you are in tank tops?” 

“You have,” Keith says. He’s still blinking in surprise. “But, back up. You want me to  _ meet your family?”  _

“Well, yeah.” Lance pauses, hesitantly flicking his gaze up to Keith’s eyes. “I started thinking about it after I met yours, and . . . eventually, you’re gonna have to. We’re a tight-knit clan, Keith. You get one McClain, you get all of us. We’re a package deal. Is that . . . I mean, I thought you’d be fine with that.” 

“No—I mean, that’s fine,” Keith stumbles over himself hastily. “I just . . . I never thought someone would want to introduce me to their family.” 

“Oh.” Lance feels his face start to burn a little, and not from the heat of the steadily rising sun. “Well, yeah . . . I do. Want to do that, I mean.” 

Keith is looking at him, this strangely intense look on his face that has Lance squirming a little, anxious because he doesn’t know what it means. “Well, anyway—” he starts, feeling the beginnings of nervous babble building up on his tongue—and then Keith reels him in by the waist to kiss him, and all of Lance’s nonsense words die in his mouth. 

Keith tastes like sunscreen and sunshine—Lance’s favorite combination. His lips are warm and delightfully soft, and Lance makes this pleased little noise because that last part is definitely  _ his _ doing. Keith didn’t even know what chapstick  _ was  _ before Lance came into his life. And now he uses it  _ regularly,  _ and honestly, that might be the most important achievement of Lance’s life. 

“What’s that for?” he murmurs against his mouth when they part, feeling his own curve up into a small smile, and that’s  _ before  _ Keith goes: “I just—I love you a lot more than I thought it was possible to love someone.” 

Lance is totally,  _ definitely  _ about to pull him back in and kiss his whole face off, but then he realizes something.  _ “Hey.”  _

Keith blinks, as if dizzied by the sudden switch in tone. “What?” 

Lance brushes a thumb over Keith’s pale,  _ non-glittery  _ cheekbone, delighted. “It  _ worked.  _ I’m a  _ genius.”  _

Keith blinks again. He repeats,  _ “What.”  _

Just then, Hunk peeks his head out of the sliding glass door to call: “Hey, lovebirds, breakfast is ready! Also, hey Keith, you’re not sparkling! Did Lance try that sunscreen thing?” 

Keith blinks a third series of disbelieving blinks.  _ “What.  _ Is  _ happening  _ right now?” 

  
  


_____

  
  


Over breakfast, Lance announces his geniusness to the table at large, and then an intrigued Allura wants in on the sunscreen action. So they really do all have a day at the beach: they lay out on some towels and listen to the mingled sounds of the waves and the seagulls, phones nearby  _ just in case.  _ Hunk brings smoothies for the both of them for lunch, and after that, Lance tugs everyone out of the sand and into the water. Many laughs are had, water wars are waged and won (by Allura and Lance’s team, obviously), and reconcilatory kisses with Keith are exchanged over crashing waves. 

_ “Boo!”  _ Allura shouts, splashing a wall of water in their direction when their makeout session is  _ just  _ getting good, so they break away to glare at her, and at her innocuous, sunny smile, decide to take a break from the water in favor of a romantic stroll down the beach. 

“Ah, today’s been so nice,” Lance sighs, swinging Keith’s hand in his as they walk. “Reminds me of home.” 

“Yeah?” Keith looks over at him, and the sunlight catches his eyes and turns them to bright, dazzling violet.  _ Beautiful.  _ Lance almost sighs again. “Tell me about it.” 

He looks at him for a long moment, determining whether or not Keith really means it. But his smile is steady, and his gorgeous eyes are genuine, so after a moment of Lance’s heart doing some really stupid, really sappy salsa number in his chest, he does. 

He tells Keith about his days with Rachel; about the days with  _ all  _ of his siblings, back when they were all young enough to live at home and Lance was still the baby, five years old and toddling adoringly after his siblings until they destroyed his misshapen sandcastles and he went running to their mamá to tattle. Keith laughs at that one, and Lance files the sound away in his memories to play later, over and over. 

He talks about his papá, too, a little—about how he used to buy Lance ice cream at the shop on the pier after he had a hard day at school, about how he loved to watch the sunset but never tried to paint them. And then he tells Keith that his father was a painter, a  _ really good one,  _ but unfortunately Lance didn’t inherit a single one of his artistic talents. But he always loved to watch his father work anyway, and he has dozens, maybe hundreds of memories stored away just of sitting in his papá’s studio while he worked and soft Latin pop played in the background. 

It hurts to talk about him, in a way, but not as much as he thought it would. It’s always going to be a little bittersweet, probably—all of the good memories that are always going to be there, underlied by the unchangeable fact that his father is  _ not,  _ now. 

He wishes, with a sort of longing that twists in his chest, that he could talk about him like this with his mother. He hopes that someday she’ll be ready to talk about him, to move on from the clinging pain into the  _ healing  _ part of grief. 

But for now, talking to Keith about him is just as nice. Keith, with his quiet hums and his supportive hand squeezes and his attention on Lance, always, like every word he says is important, like everything he does matters in some deep, universe-altering way. 

(Keith had said: “ _ I love you a lot more than I thought it was possible to love someone.”  _ The thing Lance hadn’t said, the thing he might work up the courage to say someday, is:  _ I never thought it was possible that anyone could love me this much.)  _

Eventually, he and Keith start making their way back. Lance needs to pee, like,  _ insanely  _ badly, and unfortunately his pesky human necessities don’t care about the fact that he’s trying to have a romantic beach day with his boyfriend. Keith needs to check in with Shiro and the others, anyway, so Lance leaves him in the sand and goes sprinting for the house as soon as it’s in sight. Then it’s through the sliding doors, up the stairs, and into the bathroom attached to the guest bedroom Keith had led him through earlier, because he doesn’t know where any of the other bathrooms are and it’s faster than opening all the doors and hoping he’ll find the right one. 

Approximately five minutes later—bladder blissfully empty, sand scrubbed out from beneath his nails, sunscreen meticulously reapplied—Lance emerges from the bathroom ready to head back to his friends and with all of his cares and worries diluted by an afternoon of sun and salty sea breezes. 

Those cares and worries reemerge with a vengeance when, out of his peripheral, a dark figure snags in his vision. 

Lance does a double-take. And sure enough: there, by the window, stands the shadowy form of Zarkon. 

Lance’s heart drops into his stomach. “Um.” 

His mind starts racing with questions and calculations.  _ When did he get here? How did he get in without the others noticing? Where are Shiro and the others? How far can I get downstairs before he catches up to me?  _

Zarkon chuckles. The sound is low and creepy, exactly the sort of villain laugh from an action movie.  _ Quiznack,  _ Lance realizes mournfully,  _ my life has devolved into a low-budget, straight-to-DVD action movie.  _

And he was  _ so  _ on his way to a blockbuster coming-of-age romantic drama.  _ Why  _ do these things  _ always _ have to happen to  _ him?  _

“If you’re thinking about running for help, don’t,” the villain says, with cold, typical amusement. “Any attempt to fight me would be useless. After all, I am a million times stronger than you . . . faster than you . . .  _ better  _ than you, in every conceivable way.” He takes a step away from the window, which is the opposite direction that Lance wants him to go. It means he’s  _ coming closer to him.  _

“Haha, dude, taking jabs at my low self-esteem. Good one,” Lance says weakly, while he mentally  _ wills  _ one of his vampire/werewolf bodyguards to appear behind him.  _ Come on, Keith,  _ he desperately thinks,  _ you saved me in Seattle in like three seconds, and that was when you weren’t even in the same  _ city  _ as me.  _ Usually he’s kind of grateful Keith can’t read his mind—because,  _ boy,  _ he keeps some embarrassing stuff up there—but right now, there’s nothing he’s  _ less  _ grateful for. 

“How rare. A mortal who recognizes their lowly status. That must be why Shirogane’s clan keeps you around, hmm? You’re easy prey.” Zarkon’s lip curls back in a sneer-smile combo. Mostly, the action leaves him looking grotesque. “They all pretend to be so high and mighty, but we  _ all  _ know that it goes against our nature to resist our urges. The urge to  _ hunt . . .  _ to kill. They must be playing quite the round of cat-and-mouse with you, indeed.” 

“Don’t talk about them like that,” Lance snaps, unable to help himself. “None of them would ever hurt me. Also, don’t talk about  _ me  _ like that. I don’t appreciate being compared to weak, tiny animals.” 

“But I thought we were in agreement,” Zarkon replies, “You  _ are  _ a weak, tiny animal.” He takes another step closer—close enough to make Lance sweat, close enough that Zarkon could just reach out and  _ grab him.  _ And that’s when Lance’s rationality leaves the window, when he snatches the generic, framed artwork of a beach from the dresser beside him and  _ throws  _ it at the vampire’s face. Then he turns and  _ nopes  _ out of there—but not without feeling a fleeting feeling of satisfaction when he hears the frame connect with a  _ thwack,  _ and Zarkon’s subsequent roar of pain. 

Unfortunately, that feeling of satisfaction really  _ is  _ fleeting; he’s so focused on  _ getting away  _ that he doesn’t pay any mind to the path he’s taking, doesn’t notice the way the floor turns to stairs beneath his feet until he’s already falling. 

He tumbles, his ankle twisting with  _ searing  _ pain as he goes, fetching up at the bottom with his lungs seizing in pain and fear. But he pushes himself up anyway, determined to make it back outside, because if he can just get to Keith—

But when he drags himself into the kitchen, the sight that meets him causes all of the blood in his body to freeze. 

The other vampire is there, hands raised and pointed at the glass doors. Some sort of purple light seems to be emanating from her fingertips, and it crackles inside of the glass like stray bolts of lightning. 

On the other side, his friends are tugging and yanking and  _ slamming  _ with all their might—and with absolutely no luck. 

Haggar has sealed the exit. Lance can’t get outside that way. And his friends can’t get in to him. 

Even through the aching, throbbing feeling in his ankle, Lance tries to think. He wonders if  _ all  _ of the exits are sealed like this, or if he would have better luck with the front door. A window, even—

Before he can even conceptualize  _ moving  _ to find out, though, he sees Keith’s eyes widen in sheer, blood-curdling  _ terror,  _ and Lance spins to find Zarkon blocking the doorway of the kitchen. 

Lance is, in the most awful, literal sense of the word,  _ trapped.  _

“Oh, come  _ on,”  _ he whines, “Do we  _ really  _ have to use every cliche in the book? Can’t we all just come to a mutual understanding, share a few jokes and laughs, and part ways as unlikely friends? Because personally, that’s my favorite scenario. Though, if this was a game of  _ Episode,  _ I’m not gonna lie, Zarkon, I’d  _ totally  _ choose to divorce you—” 

While he’s rambling, Lance is desperately scouring the room for something,  _ anything  _ to give him the upper hand. But he doesn’t know where any of the knives or even a pair of  _ kitchen scissors  _ are, and even if he did, he wouldn’t have time to get to them. He doesn’t even know if they’d do any damage. He really needs to study up more on vampire strengths and weaknesses before another rogue vampire decides to attack him. 

(He hopes there won’t be a next time, but honestly, he wouldn’t totally rule out the possibility. Though, he supposes he won’t have to worry about that if he doesn’t survive this one.) 

(Lance very firmly does not think about that possibility.) 

“Like, I’d even spend real money on the extra gems if it came to that, dude. I’m telling you, it would be the smartest monetary purchase I’d ever make in my entire life—” 

A lot of things happen at once, then. Zarkon growls, finally fed up as he exclaims, “Never in my  _ life  _ have I met a human as incessantly talkative as you—” 

Lance’s eyes lock onto Haggar, and a tentative,  _ very unlikable  _ plan springs into his mind. 

Zarkon charges, hands outstretched to grab him—

And Lance  _ leaps  _ at the witch, arms circling around her waist and taking her to the ground. They go tumbling over each other, Haggar’s sparks shooting roguely at the ceiling and sending down plaster everywhere. But at least her magic is no longer fixed on the door, and Lance is hopeful that that means his friends will be able to get in before anything  _ too  _ bad happens. 

There’s a sound like glass shattering, and voices shouting, and Lance feels a single moment’s rush of relief—

But then he realizes he’s been  _ pinned  _ to the floor, and he can’t even move his  _ fingertips;  _ it feels like there’s electricity coursing through his veins, but _not_ that pleasant buzz he gets when he kisses Keith. It’s like bolts of stabbing lightning, and Lance’s vision goes white, and everything in his mind  _ blanks  _ as  _ fire  _ bites into his wrist, and that’s when he loses his consciousness to the screaming. 

The last thing he hears before everything fades out is Keith’s voice, fearful and frantic and  _ wrecked,  _ saying his name:  _ “Lance. _ Lance, you’re gonna be okay, just—just  _ stay awake.  _ Lance? _ LANCE!”  _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay, so, hear me out on the sunscreen thing: 
> 
> if stephanie meyer can make vampires sparkle, i can make them _not_ sparkle through the power of SPF-50. it makes the exact same amount of sense, so that's just how it is. i don't make the rules. 
> 
> also, kinda (maybe?) important: so it turns out when i was going back to recount the chapters, i realized that the chapter i had planned for next week is very, _very_ short. so what i can do is either leave it as is, and you'll get a super short chapter next week and then another slightly shortish chapter before the epilogue, oR i can combine the next two chapters and bump the total chapter count down to eleven. whatever you guys would prefer, i don't really mind either way. just let me know :) 
> 
> thanks for reading!


	10. feelin' alive, a teenager

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so i wound up keeping things as-is at twelve chapters, because the truth is maybe i'm not quite ready to let go of our twilight boys yet. i can't believe we're this close to the end. it's been so much fun writing it and i'm so glad that so many of you are enjoying this au as much as i am. who would have thought i'd get this attached to a twilight au lol, but here we are. 
> 
> this one's a short one, but i hope you enjoy <3

_ Everything is blissfully tranquil. There’s the sound of waves rushing in Lance’s ears, more familiar to him than his own heartbeat. He’s standing in the surf, the sun rising brilliantly over the horizon, painting the sky in vivid shades of rose and orange and baby blue.  _

_ “That was a close call,  _ mijo,”  _ a voice says, and Lance turns his head to find his papá standing next to him. The sight fills him with swirling happiness, with fizzing bubbles of  _ relief.  _ He never thought he would ever see him again. “Papá.”  _

_ Then he remembers why he thought he would never see him again, and the little smile that was beginning to curve onto his mouth fades. “Wait—am I dead?”  _

_ The sunlight turns his father’s eyes golden, and his own smile doesn’t waver as he shakes his head. “No, Lance. You still have a lot of life left in you. You’re going to wake up soon.”  _

_ His papá’s words do fill him with some relief, but also—with unbearable sadness. “You had a lot of life left in you, too,” he whispers.  _

_ “That’s true,” his papá agrees, and at Lance’s forlorn look, he sighs ruefully. “I am sorry that I cannot explain how this cycle of life and death works. Truth is, I’m still not very sure of it myself. But one thing I am always sure of is how much I love you. And how proud I am of you.”  _

_ “You’re proud of me?” Lance’s eyebrows crease. “Why? I mean I—it’s not like I’ve done a whole lot of pride-worthy things, lately. Most of the time I feel like I’m only one minor inconvenience away from falling apart.”  _

_ “But you have remained strong in spite of those feelings,” his father says. “For your mother. For our family. For that boyfriend of yours—who, by the way, you should probably get back to soon before  _ he  _ falls apart. He’s not doing too well.”  _

_ “Oh, shit. Right. Keith’s probably gonna be  _ so  _ pissed that I almost died again. This is like, the fifth time this week.”  _

_ His father’s smile twitches as he hums his agreement. “He cares for you very much. But please, Lance, after this one . . . no more near-death scares again for a while. A month, at least. A month and a half, even.”  _

_ “I dunno . . .” Lance ponders. “I might be able to manage two weeks, tops. But only if I wrap myself in bubble-wrap and don’t go outside.”  _

_ When his papá laughs, the whole world seems to go bright around the edges, like someone took the sun and turned the brightness up by a thousand. And it’s the best thing Lance has heard in so long . . . until he realizes that the brightness is still steadily climbing. His papá’s image is starting to fade.  _

_ “Wait—Papá . . .” Lance starts, a hand reaching out to grasp at his shoulder, at his shirt, at  _ anything.  _ But no matter how close his hand gets, his father appears to be just a millimeter out of his reach.  _

_ His papá’s smile doesn’t waver, even now. “It’s time to go,” he says. “Tell your mother that I love her. Goodbye, Lance.”  _

_ “Goodbye, Papá.” Lance’s throat is thick with unaddressed tears.  _ “Te quiero mucho.” 

“Te quiero mucho.”  _ The bright light that’s been steadily creeping in around the edges swallows Lance and his papá whole, and when he closes his eyes— _

Lance wakes up. 

There’s a beeping coming from somewhere, a steady pace like a heartbeat, but Lance only hears it briefly before his ears tune in to the voice talking over the sound. 

“I am so  _ mad at you.  _ I hope you can feel how angry I am, because I am— _ so  _ mad at you. Shit, I already said that. Anyway, the doctors and nurses keep saying you’re going to be fine, which is a good thing, because that means I won’t have to feel too bad about  _ murdering  _ you. I am going to kill you, Lance.  _ Why  _ do you always get yourself into these situations?” 

It’s Keith. Obviously. Only one person can sound so affectionate while talking about murdering him. He feels his mouth twitch at the edges as he turns his head, blinking open his eyes onto the dim room around him. And there’s Keith, the first thing to focus, sitting in a chair that’s pulled up right next to the bed Lance is laying in. Then he realizes he’s in a bed; takes note of the machines around him and the needle in his wrist and puts two and two together. He’s in a hospital. 

Lance hates hospitals. But oddly, right now he isn’t too upset about it. At least it means he’s alive. 

“It’s another of my many talents,” he says, immediately making a face at the sound of his voice. It’s raspy from disuse, and sounds like he’s been put through a voice generator to make him sound like crinkling wrapping paper. “Though, to be fair, I don’t think I can be  _ totally  _ blamed for this one. I mean, I’m pretty sure Zarkon was like. Ninety percent to blame, at least.” 

He’s expecting Keith to laugh. He doesn’t. Keith’s eyes are dark and heavy, red-rimmed and glossy like he’s about to start crying. But no tears fall—Lance wonders if vampires  _ can  _ cry—and his mouth presses into a thin line as he squeezes Lance’s hand. He’s holding Lance’s hand. Everything is still very slowly coming together in his mind. 

“This is  _ my _ fault,” Keith says thickly. “If it wasn’t for me, none of this would have happened.” 

“What?” Even through his foggy brain, something tells Lance that nothing about that is logical. He blinks. “How did you come to those conclusions?” 

The thin line of Keith’s mouth wobbles a little as he looks down. “If . . . if you weren’t dating me—” he begins. And that’s when Lance clicks together where he’s trying to go with this, and his brain responds:  _ absolutely not.  _

“Absolutely not,” he says—a little sharply, which sounds strange wrapped in the crinkly paper quality of his voice, “We’re not gonna play that game, Keith. You didn’t make an evil vampire become obsessed with me. What are you going to do next—blame yourself for  _ existing?  _ For loving me? For me loving you?” 

Keith won’t look at him. “I mean . . .” 

“No, you don’t mean,” Lance says. Then he sighs, slumping back into the pillows and tugging Keith’s hand up to cradle like a stuffed animal. “Look, it was scary, yeah. But it wasn’t your fault. And I’m still alive, so that’s what matters, right?” 

Keith is silent for a moment. Then he says, “Well if I argue with you now, I’ll sound like an asshole.” 

“Yeah.” Lance’s mouth twitches. “Exactly.” 

Keith looks up at him with a scowl, but it fades quickly the moment he meets Lance’s eyes.  _ Sap,  _ he thinks affectionately. “I’m really glad you’re okay,” he says—no longer exasperated or guilt-tinged. Just raw honesty. 

Lance squeezes his hand. “Yeah, me too,” he replies softly. Then he sighs. “Okay, so now that that’s out of the way. What happened?” 

So Keith tells him. There’s a lot Lance doesn’t remember—a lot he was unconscious for, actually. When he had tackled Haggar, she’d turned her magic on him to keep him paralyzed on the ground. Luckily, she’d been so focused on him that Keith, Allura, and Hunk had been able to open the door before she realized her mistake. Shiro and the others had burst through the front door around the same time in a show of perfect theatric timing, and they’d all started battling it out right there in the kitchen. Haggar had abandoned Lance’s body on the floor by then to use her magic against the others, and they’d all been so caught up in fighting her that at first, they hadn’t even realized that Zarkon had gotten to Lance. 

Keith’s eyes go extra glassy as he traces his fingertips down to Lance’s wrist, and Lance’s heart freezes for a moment when he follows them down to the crescent moon-shaped scar there. A scar that definitely wasn't there before. 

“I had to—had to get the venom out myself, while the others were destroying Zarkon and Haggar,” Keith says, voice rough, but his hand is so gentle where it circle’s Lance’s wrist that he has a hard time processing how serious that statement is, for a moment. 

“You mean . . .” Lance can’t say it. He’s focused on the two smaller dots within the scar, puncture wounds like fangs. And he’s thinking about Zarkon sinking his teeth in with the intent to kill him. And he’s thinking about Keith doing the same thing, fighting all of his instincts so that he could  _ save him.  _ It’s horrible, nightmarish. It really puts into perspective how grave the whole situation was. 

He almost _died._ _Again._ Maybe he really should wrap himself in bubble wrap and never leave his house again. 

“I’m so sorry,” Keith says, and Lance shakes his head, not understanding what the apology is for until he goes on, words saturated with pain. “It . . . it was so hard to stop. It was . . .  _ so  _ hard, Lance. I’m sorry.” 

Lance shakes his head again. “No, Keith—you  _ saved  _ me. You stopped. You saved me. That’s all that matters.” He reaches out his hand to snag on Keith’s jacket, tugging him closer. Keith follows reluctantly, but he doesn’t fight Lance when he reels him in that last little distance to kiss him. It’s a chaste kiss, soft and slow, lips catching and dragging against one another and pausing, content just to exist within each other’s space. And then Keith sighs, tipping forward to rest his forehead against Lance’s, and he tells him: “By the way, you need to call your mother. She’s  _ pissed.”  _

Lance freezes, as a fear unrivaled by any other—Zarkon and Haggar, who?—slowly begins to pulse from his heart and into his veins. All he can think is one single, dread-stricken loop of thought. 

_Quiznack._ Evil vampires may not have been enough to kill him, but his mother's wrath is another supernatural force entirely. "Time to start planning my funeral," he says gravely. 

He's _so_ dead. 


	11. i've missed you around

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> only one more chapter after this!! agh, it's so bittersweet. 
> 
> enjoy <3

Nothing is as crippling as the look his mother fixes on him when he walks into the kitchen, and that’s saying something, because Lance is hobbling on crutches due to his very broken ankle. 

(Keith had wanted to walk him inside, but Lance wouldn’t let him in the door. He’s scared that if his mamá sees him, she’ll turn her rage on him first and ban him from ever seeing her son again.) 

Yeah, it’s better to face the full brunt of her anger himself, even if it’s terrifying. And it is certainly the most terrifying thing he’s ever experienced. That is also saying something, because Lance was just almost murdered by evil vampires a day ago. 

“Mamá—” Lance begins, but his mother holds up a hand to stop him before he can get out another word. “Sit,” she says, and Lance pulls out the nearest chair and sinks into it immediately. 

Well, almost immediately. There’s a bit of scuffling as Lance tries to sit down with the crutches that eventually ends with giving up and dropping them to the floor on either side of him. His mother watches all of this silently. Lance’s heart is in his  _ throat.  _

“Of all my children,” his mamá begins, and Lance flinches immediately in dread. Her mouth flattens into a line. “Of all my children,” she repeats, _“You_ were the one I had hopes for of never having a rebellious streak. You’ve never stayed out late intentionally, and on the rare occasions you _have,_ you’ve texted or called to let me know why, unlike Veronica. You’ve never partied like Luis. You’ve never been arrested like Rachel. You’ve never even brought home a _speeding ticket,_ unlike _all_ of your siblings. But _this.”_ Lance flinches again, and he definitely doesn’t make a joke about how surprising that last one is, considering his tendencies to not pay attention to traffic signs. 

“Sneaking out to take a weekend getaway trip with your boyfriend. In  _ California.  _ You fly nearly twenty hours away from home without breathing a  _ word  _ of it to me, and I wake up to a series of non-specific texts from you saying things along the lines of:  _ ‘went to Cali with Keith, everything is fine,’  _ and  _ ‘please don’t murder me when I get back.’  _ Your bed is empty. I try to text  _ and call  _ you dozens of times with no response, so eventually I have no choice but to go in for my shift. While I am working, I get a call from Keith that says you are at a  _ different  _ hospital because you somehow  _ broke  _ your  _ ankle.  _ But he informs me that  _ everything is fine  _ and that he’ll get you home as quickly as he can. Do I have all of these facts straight?” 

Not really, but Lance is already in for the grounding of his life, so he’s not going to correct her on the things that are actually much worse than she thinks. He swallows around the lump in his throat. “That about sums it up, yeah.” 

His mother breathes in once, very deeply, through her nose. She pinches the bridge of her nose between her thumb and index finger and closes her eyes. 

“So all of this,” she says,  _ “All of this  _ happens, and I’m sitting here trying to put together  _ why  _ my good son—the one who makes straight A’s and never gets into trouble and is genuinely,  _ truly  _ the last of my children that I would expect to do something like this— _ did  _ something like this. But most of all, I’m wondering why you did this without  _ telling  _ me.” 

She opens her eyes, the same blue that she gave to Lance staring into him like she’s trying to puzzle out a stranger. It makes Lance feel awful, being on the end of her gaze like this.  _ “Why  _ did you do it, Lance? It’s true, I probably wouldn’t have been very happy about the idea of you going on a spontaneous beach trip with your boyfriend, but I . . . if you had  _ told  _ me beforehand, at least I wouldn’t have had to worry about you. At least I wouldn’t have been so  _ afraid  _ when I woke up and my child was  _ gone.”  _

Lance flinches again. He knew that that was going to be the biggest issue for his mother, but that still wasn’t enough to prepare him for the way the words sting, as physical as a slap to the face. There’s also nothing he can say to make the situation less bad than it is, because it’s not like he can explain to his mother the  _ real  _ reason why he left so suddenly. 

“I didn’t . . . I didn’t want to worry you, Mamá. I just . . .” Lance doesn’t know what to say. All of the words in his head are getting jumbled up, and so many of the things he  _ could  _ say are things he doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want to hurt her, but even aside from the fact that his boyfriend is a vampire, he’s been keeping so many things from her lately. He feels like they’ve grown so far apart in the months they’ve been here, and even though they talk more these days, they don’t talk about anything that actually  _ matters.  _

“Just what, Lance?” 

“Just—” Lance sighs. He lowers his eyes to the table, bites his lip, and murmurs, “Communication hasn’t exactly been  _ easy,  _ lately. It was easier to just—to just  _ go.”  _

His mother is silent for a long time. Long enough for Lance’s heart to start beating again normally, though his eyes begin to mist over where he’s staring into the wood. 

And then she stands and leaves, still without a word, and that lump of hard emotion returns to Lance’s throat as he thinks:  _ great, now I’ve permanently damaged what we were  _ just  _ starting to get back.  _ His exhaustion from the weekend he’s had is starting to catch up to him now, making him feel numb as he lifts the foot attached to his uninjured ankle to rest on his chair, wrapping his arms around it and resting his chin on his knee like it’ll do anything to comfort him. It doesn’t. 

Maybe he should have asked Keith to stay, after all. Even if his mamá tried to kick him out, Keith’s a vampire. He totally could fight her and win . . . maybe. Actually, probably not. Sighing, he contemplates texting him to come back. He doesn’t really feel like being alone right now. 

It’s right as he’s reaching into his pocket to fish out his phone, though, that his mother returns. She’s clutching something tightly to her chest that he can’t make out until she sits back down; next to him, instead of across from him, where she’d sat before. It’s a photo album, which is a sight in itself; Lance hasn’t seen one of those in a long time. The cover is blank and nondescript, but it’s filled nearly to bursting with printed out photos, and even more spill haphazardly out of the sides. Lance carefully peels one of the loose ones out, smooths it on the table to look at it. His throat tightens again, this time with a different emotion. It’s a photo of his parents, both of them young and standing in the sun, beaming smiles across their faces that Lance can see traces of himself in. 

“You asked me when we first moved here,” his mother begins softly, reaching to unfold the bent corner of the photo beneath Lance’s hands. “Why Forks? Why a small town all the way across the country from our family? What makes Forks so special?” 

“What does make Forks special?” Lance repeats now. His heart is beginning to pick up speed again, wondering if this is  _ it.  _ If this is the moment when  _ finally _ things start to make a little bit of sense. 

His mother flips the photo album open. And suddenly,  _ nothing  _ makes sense. 

The very first photo in the album is of his mamá and papá, in their early twenties, standing in front of a house. But it’s— _ their  _ house, the house he and his mamá are sitting in right now, and there’s a  _ sold! _ sign sticking out the ground right next to his papá’s brilliant grin. He’s giving the camera a  _ thumbs up,  _ and Lance sees so much of himself in the gesture that his heart  _ twinges. _

“I . . .” Lance blinks at the photo, then up at his mother, completely lost. “I don’t understand. You—you lived here? With Papá?” 

His mother’s smile is small, tinged with sadness, but it’s— _ there.  _ “They say the first year of marriage is the hardest, you know. But for me and your papá? It was the second.” She tugs another stray photo out of the book. It’s another one of them, also taken in Forks. Lance recognizes the diner as Hunk’s moms’ place. “I was finishing my last year of college, and your father had just dropped out to focus on his art. Both my parents and his were giving him shit about that—his parents were worried that he wouldn’t be respected without a college degree and a  _ real  _ career, and my parents thought that his dropping out was  _ proof _ that he shouldn’t be respected.” Her mouth twists unpleasantly at that, like she’s just taken a bite out of a lemon. His mamá never talks much about her side of the family, and he knows they aren’t very close, but this is the first Lance has ever heard her speak like  _ this.  _ “It was a struggle, trying to balance our two families and keep them from starting World War III. Sometimes your father said we were like Romeo and Juliet—he tried to see the good parts of the situation, but believe it or not, it’s nowhere near as romantic to live that story as it might sound.” 

“I mean, it’s not that hard to believe.  _ Romeo and Juliet _ is technically a tragedy, Mamá,” Lance points out quietly. His mamá hums. 

“Well, I suppose we were on our way to tragedy then. Divorce instead of death, at least, but still—it was not a good time. We used to fight every night. Slamming doors, shouting, crying . . . it was terrible. I don’t say we were on the verge of divorce lightly, Lance. I had hired a lawyer to draw up the papers.” 

Lance’s breath catches between his teeth in a silent gasp. He’s  _ definitely  _ never heard anything about this before. The word  _ divorce  _ and his parents were never even a possible combination in his head, growing up. They’ve always been so in love with each other that when he was younger, it felt like the entire world revolved around it. He can’t imagine a world where they ever shouted at each other, let alone were on the verge of their relationship falling apart. 

“Yes, I know,” his mother smiles thinly at the look on his face. “It’s hard for me to believe now, looking back on it. But it’s true,  _ mijo.  _ I was ready to give up everything. But your father wasn’t. He believed that maybe if we got away from our families for a while, we might still have a chance at working through our problems and saving our marriage. So when I graduated in the spring, we packed up our shoebox apartment and moved all the way out here. Forks was a place that meant nothing to either of us—we’d never been here before, and we knew no one. We didn’t even know if we would like it here, or if the first sign of snow would send us packing. But we bought this house, and . . .” His mother shrugs, like,  _ the rest is history.  _ “We lived here for three years. We thought maybe we would start our family here, but with both of us working and your father’s parents missing him so dearly, we moved back to Miami when I got pregnant with Marco so they could help out. But there are many good memories in this home, Lance. Enough that after your father . . .” she trails off, her eyes dimming again as she pauses for a moment to gather herself. 

“I looked up the address on a  _ whim.  _ I just wanted to see—I don’t  _ know _ what I wanted. But when I saw that it was for sale again, I . . . it felt like fate. And I was so  _ sick  _ of the city, and I missed the fresh air and the way rain sounded on the roof at night, and I just wanted to feel  _ close _ to him again so I—so I didn’t even  _ think  _ before I contacted the realtor. I know that I shouldn’t have moved you like that—I know, I  _ know  _ living in Forks has been so hard for you. And I haven’t made it any easier, and I just—I’m so  _ sorry,  _ Lance. That this happened, and that I dragged you into my mess, when  _ I  _ should have been there for you. I’ve been such a terrible mother lately, and—” 

“Hey, no.” Lance shakes his head adamantly, reaching to cover his mother’s hand with his. Lance has been wanting an explanation and an apology from her for  _ months,  _ but now that he’s getting it, he doesn’t have the heart to feel vindictive. “You could  _ never  _ be a bad mom. You . . . I mean,  _ yeah,  _ the past few months have sucked. The past  _ year  _ has sucked. But it’s not your fault that you’ve been feeling the way you have. And I don’t— _ blame you  _ for it. I just wish . . . I wish there was more I could  _ do.  _ I’ve . . . I’ve felt so  _ lost  _ lately, Mamá.” 

His mother nods, sniffing tearfully as she runs a hand through her unbrushed hair. “We can—we can talk about moving back to Florida, if that’s what you want to do. If you need to be with the rest of our family right now—whatever you need. I’ll give it to you. I’ll make up for the past few months—” 

“No,” Lance shakes his head again, daring to interrupt her a second time, squeezing her hand in his. “No, Mamá, I don’t want to move. I . . . I _love_ Forks.” He doesn’t realize the truth of that until it’s coming out of his mouth, but it’s true. He loves this rainy, dreary town in the middle of nowhere. He loves the smaller class sizes and the way he feels like an actual _person_ at his school, instead of just a numbered head to be counted and graded and passed over. He loves hanging out with Hunk at the diner, and obsessing over cartoons with Pidge and Allura. He loves the feeling of drizzle on his skin right before the rain starts to pour, and the way the rain drums across the metal roof of their home at night when he’s going to sleep. (He can understand why his mother missed it; it’s one of the most soothing sounds he knows, now.) 

Most of all, he loves the people. He loves his friends—Hunk and Allura and Pidge—and he loves (almost all) his teachers, and Hunk’s moms and sisters, and Keith’s family. And he loves  _ Keith;  _ he loves  _ everything  _ about Keith. He loves hanging out with him, and riding his motorcycle with him, and even  _ studying  _ with him isn’t so bad, because he gets to watch that cute little furrow that he loves crease between Keith’s expressive eyebrows when they’re dissecting particularly complex pieces of text. And he loves holding hands with Keith, and kissing Keith, and hell, even just  _ existing  _ in the same space as Keith, because when he’s with Keith, it doesn’t matter if it’s been two days or two weeks or two  _ years  _ since he’s seen the sun. He has all of the light in his life that he needs. 

“You . . . you aren’t just saying that?” his mother asks, searching Lance’s face for any sign of dishonesty, any sign that he’s just putting on a brave face for her. “You didn’t even like Forks when we first got here.” 

“It had to grow on me,” Lance admits, “but in the end, it did. Like moss, or maybe lichen. And I love it now, and I don’t want to move. I want to stay here with you.” 

His mother’s eyes still hold traces of suspicion, but she’s beginning to smile. “Does Keith have anything to do with the change of heart?” 

“Some, yeah,” Lance says. “But not all of it. I mean, c’mon, Mamá—a  _ boy’s  _ not a good enough reason to stay in a place you hate. That’s why videochat and plane tickets exist.” 

His mother really smiles now, chuckling lowly as she says, “I suppose you’re right. Well, I guess that’s settled then. We’re staying?” 

“We’re staying,” Lance agrees. When his mother reaches out to pull him into her arms, he goes contentedly, hugging her back and blinking his tears into her shoulder. But they aren’t sad tears—they’re tears of relief, that he and his mother are okay now, and tears of happiness, that they’ve finally reached the place where they can start talking about the important things again, and—well, maybe they’re a little bit sad, because Lance thinks that there’s a part of them both that will always be sad. His papá carved out a space in their hearts when he left, and that space will never be filled by anything else. But they can talk about him, and maybe that ache that came to stay in his absence will finally begin to become something lighter, something less painful and more bittersweet. 

“Oh, Lance?” his mother says after a long while, her hand still carding through the hair at the back of Lance’s head. 

Lance hums. “Yeah?” 

“You’re still grounded.” 

Lance closes his eyes, huffing out a laugh as he nods against her shoulder. Really, he shouldn’t have expected anything else. “I know,” he says. But when his mother pulls away, she’s smiling, and Lance smiles back, and he thinks:  _ we’re going to be okay.  _

He feels lighter than he has in a very long time. He feels like he’s home. 


	12. in your arms tonight

Lance’s phone chooses the precise moment that he’s winging his eyeliner to start ringing. He jumps and the line smears, and it is definitely  _ not  _ a look. Scowling, he paws the phone off the dresser to answer the call. He puts it on speaker and sets it back down. “What do you want, Marco.” 

_ “Hello, my darling baby brother,” _ Marco replies dryly.  _ “Yes, I’m doing well, thank you for asking. Yes, the weather remains as unpleasantly humid as always. Yes, I am calling you from my new phone, since my son decided to throw my old one in the toilet earlier this week. It warms my heart to know that you remember the little things.”  _

Lance upends a bottle of micellar water on a single cotton ball and goes to work erasing the botched wing. “What do you want, Marco,” he repeats. He does not have  _ time  _ for chit-chat with his brother. Keith is going to be here in  _ half an hour.  _ “I’m trying to get ready for prom, here.” 

_ Prom.  _ It’s a little bit insane, how quickly time’s flown by. He’s been so caught up in his new world of vampire boys and werewolf friends and evil witch moms that he hadn’t even noticed the end of senior year was creeping up on him until, all of a sudden, it was  _ here.  _

(Keith asked him to prom in the most cliche way ever: he arranged pepperonis on a pizza to spell  _ “prom?”  _ and brought it to his doorstep like a delivery boy. Lance had subsequently professed his love and asked Keith to marry him in one breath. Then they’d laughed for a while, made out on the couch for a while longer, and then watched a movie while Lance ate the entire pizza.) 

(That’s the great thing about dating a vampire. When they have pizza dates, Lance doesn’t even have to  _ share.)  _

_ “Oh, prom, huh? You still dating that Keith guy?”  _

The smeared eyeliner is now nonexistent, and Lance starts reapplying it as he hums affirmatively. “I am still dating Keith, yes, and will continue to date him forever. You’ll probably be getting a wedding invitation in the mail shortly.” 

_ “About that,”  _ Marco says,  _ “You might have to change the address on that invitation.”  _

Lance freezes, but gratefully the eyeliner pen doesn’t go all over the place this time. “You’re moving?” 

_ “Well, maybe,”  _ Marco amends.  _ “The company I work for is opening up another branch on the west coast. They’re offering me quite the promotion to uproot my family and move to Washington state . . .”  _

Lance blinks at his reflection, then at his phone. “Shut the quiznack up,” he says. 

_ “I’m serious,”  _ Marco laughs.  _ “I mean, of course, I wanted your and Mamá’s opinions first, before I gave any final answers. But Lisa and the kids love the idea. The job’s in Seattle, but that’s not  _ too  _ too far from Forks, right?”  _

“It’s practically commuting distance.” Lance bites his lip on his smile. “You—of  _ course  _ I think it sounds great. But what about Abuela and the others?” 

_ “You know Abuela, Luis, and Veronica can take care of themselves. And each other, for that matter. We should all probably be more worried for Rachel than anyone, up in New York by herself. Anyway, they all say I should take the job.”  _

“Yes,” Lance repeats. “Take the job. I mean, call Mamá,  _ then  _ take the job. You guys are gonna  _ love  _ Washington.” 

Marco chuckles.  _ “Well, alright then. I guess the decision is practically made. Have fun at prom, ‘mano.”  _

_ Prom.  _ Lance sees that he only has twenty minutes left, curses,  _ “I’m still not ready,”  _ and hangs up on Marco’s laughter. 

Twenty minutes later, Lance is  _ almost  _ ready when the doorbell rings. He’s hopping on one foot as he shoves his other one into his shoe, shouting:  _ “I’ll be right there!”  _ as he trips over nothing. He’s infinitely glad that Keith’s vampire abilities do not include the ability to look through ceilings, because he can hear his mother greeting Keith in the foyer and he doesn’t want Keith to see him as anything but a suave and cool, gorgeous  _ snack  _ tonight. 

As soon as he gets downstairs and sees Keith, casually chatting with his mother and holding a bouquet of roses, all while looking like the single most  _ beautiful  _ thing he’s ever seen—and yes, shockingly, that does include himself—, Lance’s heart melts in the same instant that his throat dries up. It’s an interesting experience. Then Keith looks over to the stairs and the moment his indigo eyes meet Lance’s, his heart resolidifies so that it can perform the salsa number it reserves for any time he sees (or thinks about) Keith. 

“Hi,” Keith says, sounding peculiarly out of breath for an immortal being that doesn’t need to breathe. “You look—beautiful. Perfect. Wow.” 

_ Beautiful. Perfect. Wow.  _ Lance bites down his smile as he descends the last of the stairs, making his way over to Keith and his mother. “I could say the same about you.” 

It’s true. Lance likes Keith in whatever he’s wearing, but Keith in a suit just might become one of his favorites. He also looks like he ran a brush through his hair for once, and he smells like expensive, spicy cologne. In other words,  _ how  _ did Lance land himself such a fine piece of vampire boyfriend? 

The universe may never know. But Lance decides right then and there that he’s never going to question it. He’s just going to be grateful to  _ whatever  _ it was in the cosmos that gave him Keith. 

“So uh, I remember you said you liked red roses once,” Keith says, shifting uncertainly on his feet. It occurs to Lance, at once, that Keith is  _ nervous. _ “But  _ then  _ Pidge saw them and was like  _ ‘what the quiznack Keith, if you give him red roses he’s going to think you only want him for sex,’  _ which I  _ don’t— _ I mean, maybe a little, but not—it’s  _ not  _ like—oh shit, I should  _ not  _ have just said the word  _ sex  _ in front of your  _ mother,  _ oh no—” He fumbles, just digging himself deeper and deeper into that hole. Lance has the sensation, watching him, that if Keith were human, his face would be  _ flaming  _ right now. 

He snickers for a moment, but then decides to take pity on his poor boyfriend, plucking the bouquet out of his hands. He glances over Keith’s shoulder to where his mamá is still hovering by the door, a hand over her mouth to hide her own laughter, and grins as he turns back to Keith and promises, “They’re beautiful, Keith. I love them.” 

Some of the tension goes out of Keith’s shoulders—but not a lot. He follows Lance to the kitchen as he fills a vase with water to set the flowers in—undoubtedly so he won’t have to be alone with Lance’s mother—and mutters under his breath, “Feel free to set me on fire any time now.” 

Lance can’t help but snicker again, setting down the now filled vase on the table so his arms are free to wrap around Keith’s neck in a loose hug. He bumps their foreheads together and smiles. “Why on Earth would I do that? Then who would take me to prom?” 

“Your mother probably hates me now,” Keith says mournfully, “she’ll probably kick me out and ban me from ever seeing you again.” 

“Nah.” Lance plants a quick, reassuring smooch on Keith’s lips. “My mamá  _ loves  _ you. She’s already planned the venue and guest list for our wedding and named all five of our future children.” 

“Five?” Keith says faintly. Before Lance can say anything to that, his mother calls from the living room: “Whatever you’re doing in the kitchen, you’d better stop it right now and get out here! Those prom photos aren’t going to take themselves!” 

Lance grins, takes Keith by the hand, and drags him out of the kitchen. 

  
  


_____

  
  


“I can’t believe _this_ is the prom theme we get,” Lance snorts when they pull up to the venue. For once, they’re not on Keith’s motorcycle—Lance had stictly forbidden it, as his hair must look flawless _at_ _all times._ Allura had let Keith borrow her white convertible, but the top is up—again, to preserve Lance’s hair. _“Monte Carlo?_ That doesn’t even make any sense! _None_ of us are old enough to gamble. _Who_ approved this?” 

“I think you’re reading a bit too much into this,” Keith says dryly, but there’s humor in his eyes reflecting the fairy lights from the entranceway, and it turns them into dazzling violet starlight. “Also, don’t let Allura hear you poking holes in the theme. She’s on the dance committee, you know.” 

“How could I forget?” Allura’s been raving about the decorations for  _ weeks.  _ And honestly, though Lance was kind of hoping for a more . . .  _ grandeur  _ theme—ahem, like  _ Under the Sea,  _ because  _ mermaids? Yes _ —he has to admit that the decor is killer. It looks incredibly extravagant. No wonder prom tickets were over a hundred bucks. 

Inside the venue, it’s even more magnificent. The dance music they could hear even from outside is so loud that it makes Lance feel like his bones are vibrating, and there’s quite a number of the student body tearing it up on the dance floor. There’s also a good number who are not, and they’re all partaking in the refreshments, which include mocktails in champagne flutes, or—gambling at the tables along the far wall. Or at least, something that  _ looks _ like gambling.

“I really hope no one is actually gambling,” Lance murmurs to Keith. “I would hate for Allura to go to jail before graduation.” 

Speak of the devil. Allura appears in front of them as if out of a puff of smoke, a glass of sparkling grape juice in hand. “I was waiting for you two to arrive,” she says pleasantly. The lights from the dance floor catch on her rose-gold highlighter in glittering sparks. “What do you think? Isn’t it  _ incredible?”  _

“It’s . . . definitely incredible,” Lance agrees. Allura’s smile brightens, and he pauses, just for a moment, to appreciate the sight of it. 

Ever since they got back from Malibu, Allura’s mood has been noticeably brighter than before. Lance suspects it has something to do with ripping off Zarkon’s head and then lighting him on fire herself. He imagines that must have provided some pretty satisfying closure. 

Lance still doesn’t have all the details regarding her history with the ancient vampire—but he’s certainly never going to push Allura to tell him something she doesn’t want to. He doesn’t need to know everything. He’s just . . . really glad to see her so happy. 

“Hey, Allura!” Romelle appears on the edge of the dance floor, raising an exuberant hand to wave at her. “Come dance with me!” 

“Don’t mind if I do,” Allura murmurs. Biting back another smile, she presses her glass into Lance’s hand. “Enjoy yourselves,” she says, and on that note, she disappears into the throng of teenage dancers. 

Lance sips at his gifted beverage as he and Keith weave around the crowd to the back of the venue, which leads to an outdoor patio, and then a pathway beyond that which leads to a gazebo, strung up in more of the fairy lights from the entrance. There are a few couples out here dancing, not at all in synch with the loud, bubbly music they can hear from inside. Lance thinks that’s super romantic. He and Keith are about to be one of those super romantic couples. 

He sets his empty glass down on the rail of the gazebo, then turns to Keith, who already has a hand out for him, waiting. He forgoes the hand to just reel Keith right into him, looping his arms around his neck. He rests his head on Keith’s shoulder, humming contentedly as he thinks that yes,  _ this _ is his romantic coming-of-age drama. Finally. It’s about time, after that crazy action-movie sequence that came out of nowhere. 

“This is nice,” he murmurs against Keith’s neck, closing his eyes. “Maybe a little cliche and cheesy, but—it’s nice all the same. Don’t you think?” 

“Yeah,” Keith murmurs back. The slight rush of his breath tousles Lance’s hair. “It’s really nice.” 

They dance like that for a while: barely dancing at all, but always in each others space, swaying in lazy circles like they have all the time in the world. Maybe they do. That brings up a burning question that Lance has had for a while, now. He makes a mental note to ask when they’re alone again. 

That moment comes more quickly than he expected. It’s almost as if they’re in a true romance movie; eventually, the rest of the couples drift away to head back to the main party, leaving Keith and Lance completely alone, dancing beneath the twinkling lights against the backdrop of velvety night sky. For once, it isn’t raining, and that succeeds in further adding to the overall fairytale feeling.

Lance really hopes he’s not about to ruin it. “Hey, Keith?” he softly says, interrupting their comfortable silence. “I was wondering . . . what happens, if a vampire bites you with the intention of killing you, but doesn’t get to? Does that mean that person would turn into a vampire?” 

Keith is quiet for a long moment. His grip tightens, nearly imperceptible, on Lance’s waist. Then he exhales slowly and admits, “Yes.” 

As Lance thought. He nods, pulling away a little so he can meet Keith’s gaze. “Next question,” he says, then takes a careful breath in before asking, “Why didn’t . . . why didn’t you let me Turn, when Zarkon did it? I mean—I could be like you, right now. I could be with you forever. Is it that . . . that you don’t want to be with me forever? Or that you don’t want me to be like you?” 

Keith’s brows crease a little in the center, the way they do when he’s perplexed, or pondering. “No, of course that’s not . . . it’s not that I don’t— _ want  _ to be with you forever.” 

“Then what?” Lance presses. He can’t explain why it’s so important for him to know the answer to this. Or maybe he can. Maybe they’re going to have to have a conversation on what their future is going to look like—if there are some places Lance is going to go that Keith can’t follow. 

It’s not that it would mean the  _ end  _ for them, obviously. Shiro and Adam are proof of that. But it’s still a serious conversation, and serious has always equaled  _ scary  _ in Lance’s mind. 

Keith is quiet for another moment. They continue to sway, though neither of them are really paying attention to dancing now. And then he slowly,  _ finally, _ breaks the silence. 

“You and I . . . we’ve never, y’know,  _ talked  _ about . . . about what being a vampire really means,” he begins, eyes darting over Lance’s shoulder like it’s difficult to maintain eye contact, then darting back to him anyway. They’re wide and dark with the gravity of the conversation. He continues, with Lance’s eyes fixed on him, “I didn’t know if being a vampire is something you want. Or if it’s something you’ve even  _ thought _ about. So . . . so when it was  _ happening,  _ I just thought about how—I didn’t get to choose, you know? None of us really did. But you . . . I couldn’t  _ stand  _ the thought of you not having the choice. Because it is your choice, Lance. Whether you want to be with me for . . . I don’t know, seventy years, or seven hundred years, that’s  _ your  _ choice. Whatever you want. I just want you.” 

Lance’s breath catches. He isn’t sure why—if it’s the amount of  _ emotion  _ in Keith’s voice, or the way he looks beneath the lights, glittering in a different, softer kind of beautiful than the way the sun makes him. He becomes increasingly more certain, every moment with Keith, that there is  _ nothing  _ about him that isn’t the most beautiful, precious thing he’s ever had. 

Maybe he doesn’t know if he wants their  _ forever  _ to be metaphorical or literal, yet—but what he does know is that he is never, ever going to let Keith go. In any way. 

“I love you,” he says, fingertips tightening around Keith’s shoulders because of how  _ important  _ it feels to say the words, even if he’s said them countless times, now. “No matter what, I will  _ always  _ love you.” 

“I love you, too. Always,” Keith replies softly. He leans in to kiss him, then, and Lance closes his eyes as he pulls him further into his space, falling into warmth that has nothing to do with  _ what _ Keith is, and everything to do with  _ who _ he is. Lance could stay right here, in this moment, forever. He could stay here with Keith until the stars die out and the universe collapses in on itself, and even then, he thinks that his and Keith’s cosmic dust would reach out to find each other, drawn in again and again by the love they have for each other, swirling into a universe that’s brand new and all theirs. 

“Oh,” Lance says, remembering suddenly, detaching himself from Keith’s lips with an unnecessarily obscene  _ smack.  _ “Before I forget. So, if I  _ do  _ decide I want to be a vampire, I was thinking, and I think it would be  _ totally  _ hot if you were the one to do it. Like, it could kind of be like some sort of bonding experience, in a more literal, animalistic meaning of the phrase, ya feel? Not to mention adding a new meaning to the phrase  _ bite me—”  _

“Lance,” Keith abruptly cuts in, mouth twitching as he fights back his smile. “I think we can talk about that later. Right now, will you just kiss me again? Please?” 

And well—how can Lance say no to a boy with  _ manners?  _

As he tugs him back in for another breath-stealing, heart-swooping kiss, Lance closes his eyes and thinks that Keith is kind of, absolutely right. They have all the time in the world to talk about it later. They might have  _ forever,  _ even. 

But right now? Right now,  _ this  _ is all the forever that Lance needs. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ahhh, we've finally made it to the end. what are your final thoughts/feelings?? please cry with me. 
> 
> i've got to say (as i'm sure i've said a hundred times before) that i got far more attached to this au than i ever expected to. i only even started writing this because i needed a break from another, heavier fic that i'm writing, and then here we are and this is finished...long before my other one is expected to be lol. it's been such a wild ride. i've had so much fun writing this. 
> 
> a few people have asked if i'm planning on doing anything else for this au, and at the moment my answer is no. i think it would be fun to maybe write a oneshot of how shiro and adam got together at some point (which i remember one person hinting at me doing lol) but this is where it ends for keith and lance, probably. and i mean, let's be honest, this is where original twilight should have ended too. 
> 
> (not that i haven't totally loved the recent twilight renaissance. because all of the issues with twilight aside, we have gOt to stop hating teenage girls for loving what we love. we have enough to deal with already without having to defend everything we like to a society that does everything it can to tear us down. i remember when i was around twelve/thirteen and super into the series, almost any time i mentioned it i was met with scoffs and eyerolls and jerky remarks, and just—ugh. there's always going to be a part of me that loves this dumb series, and that's _fine._ and it's also fine if you totally hate it, but what i mean by saying all this essentially boils down to: just be nice to the teenage girls in your life, okay? it's really not that hard, and will save them a lot of insecurity and feeling like their opinions aren't valid, which they'll have to work super hard to undo in the future. thank you.) 
> 
> with thaT out of the way (i swear i'm almost done), i just wanted to say...thank you?? all of you, so much. every single one of you who's left kudos and subscribed and bookmarked, who's left one comment or commented on every single chapter, and those of you who've just read along with the weekly updates—it all means so much to me. this is the first multichapter fic i've ever finished, and it just fills my heart with all the warm fuzzy feelings that you guys have been here to be part of it and enjoy it. i love every single one of you. 
> 
> and if you've enjoyed my writing, definitely don't be strangers ;) i am shamelessly self-promoting my other works right now. definitely come say hi to me on those if you want lol
> 
> once again, i love you all <3 thanks so much for reading!


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